travel tips for the romantic and poor in santa barbara

TD and I will take a mini-trip to go to watch my best bud JRO's hooding ceremony (this ain't no simple walking) for her Ph.D. Congrats, JRO!

If anyone has any tips for booking a not-ghetto, but not pricey hotel/B&B/motel in Santa Barbara during the most overbooked weekend in graduation history (6/13-6/15), I'm all ears. Ideally, it'd be max, $150-200/night. Yes, I read this article, but every hotel they suggest is not cheap that exact weekend. The food suggestions are good though, but I want to hear more!

I had visions of this being a romantic getaway at some cute B&B, but then I checked the prices, which for that weekend are astronomical. Because he's driving us, I volunteered to pay for at least half of the hotel out of my non-existent budget. Unfortunately that relegates us to motel-land. He is not as poor, but I am not one of those girls, and so there's my budget.

Also, any suggestions on what to do while we're there? I have been several times, but always on working vacations in which I hung out in JRO's apartment, walked down to the beach, had coffee and worked at Java Joe's, and generally bummed around. Keep in mind, I'm not a strong swimmer. I want to make this weekend fun, but not too expensive. I am sure he'd like to windsurf or something though. Any good hiking trails? Anything from Solvang (which would bore him) to Ojai is cool. In fact, we might have to stay in Ojai, which is a good 25 miles away from Santa Barbara.

I'm happy to eat fish and chips and walk on free public trails and wade in God's blue ocean, which is also free. Any good cheap eats? Romantic dinner places? He's a foodie. I am too, but I'm also a romantic. We have about one day to enjoy that, and then the second day it'll be half touristing/half graduationing before we take the long trip back home. We only have a short weekend, since he has to work, and traveling to and fro takes so long.

I found a place called Prufrock's Garden Inn, which is super charming, but also terribly expensive. Also, they're mixing up their Eliot. Unless they didn't mean to imply that Prufrock had either a garden or an inn.