This wonderful and comforting home is in a fantastic, secret-of-Santa Cruz location in midtown, making everywhere you want to go within easy walking, biking, busing, or driving distance. But you may enjoy your mornings so much in this stylish, easy-living unit you’ll find it hard to get out the front gate!
Let me describe this iconic yet unique Santa Cruz banana belt experience: Many know Santa Cruz has a Mediterranean-like climate, but there are some parts of town where the local conditions are just right - the light, the air, the moisture levels, etc. - and the possibilities there for the truest of indoor/outdoor living are so much more. This is what I found in this AirBnB space, from the moment I walked in and throughout my stay. Let me describe what I mean so you can get the flavor as I did.
The host’s directions for self-check-in includes pictures of the gates and how they worked, and it was very helpful and welcoming at the end of a long day, creating a sense of ease right away about how I was going to find myself from the sidewalk to my AirBnB door. And it's during that walk-in, if you lift your head and look around, you'll begin to see the effort of some years of gardening, and care, and foresight. The espalier apple trees create privacy in the summer and light in the winter between two neighboring front yards. Right in the front yard, there is a bench underneath the kiwi vine (I believe - it was just beginning to bud with leaves), just three steps off the path, but concealed enough from the sidewalk as to create a small bit of refuge just as you come in the front gate.
As you continue toward the back, the meandering brick walkway, carefully laid and trimmed, ends in a clever gate that is a full-size facade wall and an exterior house door, all in the same materials as the main house. Beyond the gate you go between the house on one side, and more cleverness in the form of little sheds that both provide privacy to the neighbors and storage, all buil,tin the same style as the house itself. The house is an example of the early 1900s to 1920s construction in Santa Cruz, the era of many bungalows. During my stay I learned that this house is 110 years old, and practically identical in origin to five or six others in other locations nearby in the neighborhood. The house design and trim style have elements of the Victorian era when a lot of urban Santa Cruz first expanded, with the small touch of Asian influence in construction popular at that time.
Coming back to the unit itself, I arrived in the later afternoon an hour or so before sunset, and still the rooms were light and airy. Part of this I discovered is because of the skylight in the bathroom and the yellow paint job there making it appear as if the Sun glows from that room and down the several steps to the two main rooms. Also above on the landing opposite of the bathroom is the little well-equipped efficiency kitchen, with a solar tube bringing sunlight into this mostly interior location. So rather than being dark and dreary, the glow from these rooms lit up the rest of the unit.
But I get ahead of myself, because before getting that far, you first step into the bedroom, the tall and welcoming queen bed in soothing oranges and blues, set apart by the room with dark wood furniture, and a wooden leather rocking armchair that seem to be the best of the Old West brought to the modern era. The built-in bookshelves were stocked full of highly readable materials, including local history and a range of nonfiction topics.
From the bedroom I passed into a short hall, with the kitchen and bathroom on a landing just a few steps above to the left, and to the right I entered the main living room. More of the soothing shades of orange ranging from terracotta to tangerine, and mid to deep blues, with other accent colors and pillows in the room. To me it was a blend of elements - colors, textures, materials, furniture styThis wonderful and comforting home is in a fantastic, secret-of-Santa Cruz location in midtown, making everywhere you want to go within easy walking, biking, busing, or driving distance. But you may enjoy your mornings so much in this stylish, easy-living unit you’ll find it hard to get out the front gate!
Let me describe this iconic yet unique Santa Cruz banana belt experience: Many know Santa Cruz has a Mediterranean-like climate, but there are some parts of town where the local conditions are just right - the light, the air, the moisture levels, etc. - and the possibilities there for the truest of indoor/outdoor living are so much more. This is what I found in this AirBnB space, from the moment I walked in and throughout my stay. Let me describe what I mean so you can get the flavor as I did.
The host’s directions for self-check-in includes pictures of the gates and how they worked, and it was very helpful and welcoming at the end of a long day, creating a sense of ease right away about how I was going to find myself from the sidewalk to my AirBnB door. And it's during that walk-in, if you lift your head and look around, you'll begin to see the effort of some years of gardening, and care, and foresight. The espalier apple trees create privacy in the summer and light in the winter between two neighboring front yards. Right in the front yard, there is a bench underneath the kiwi vine (I believe - it was just beginning to bud with leaves), just three steps off the path, but concealed enough from the sidewalk as to create a small bit of refuge just as