Wine Tasting, Pastries, and More: Discovering Solvang, California

Velkommen! If you’re in California, whether you live here or you are just visiting you’ll want to discover Solvang, a Danish town about an hour and a half drive up the scenic side of the 101 that follows the California coast.  Wine tasting, pastries, wooden shoes, statues of Vikings and so much more to do why wouldn’t you want to visit?

My niece with a Viking!

I almost forgot Hamlet was from Denmark!

Cool wine bottle labels.

MUCH PASTRY. VERY NICE.

This place is neat. If you want to, you can look up your last name and get your family’s Coat of Arms and it gives you a detailed description of why your surname (last name) is what it is!

Neat explanation of these little shops.

Which way to go?

You can rent bicycles that are built for 4+ people and everyone has to pedal if you don’t want to walk around. The rate is hourly but I didn’t check to see how much they cost. There is also a place where you can rent Segway’s to go around the town for $40/hr but you can’t take those into stores or leaves them outside so that’s kind of weird.

Part of discovering Solvang is finding pretty things like these candles from Solvang Candle Shop.

LOVED that Solvang Candle Shop had incense. I purchased 10 of them and they smell so good. “Fizzy Pop” is my new favorite.

My Grams and my niece.

You can hardly discover anything in California without finding wine. So we did a wine tasting 🙂

This is kind of an inside joke, but I have to get my Grams mid-drink at least once.

This photograph almost captures what’s wrong with people today. Go out and instead of conversing or finding something to talk about, we spend time on our phones. Ergo, NOT TOGETHER!

This shoe is a traditional style of clog, the danes are famous for and most people put their kids in it and take a picture of it.

Some people put on some costumes and were performing a traditional Danish dance to Danish music. It looked fun.

Those old guys had a lot more energy than I did!

This one shop has faerie house display.

My niece saw the hats and was like “Let’s take pictures!”

Now you know why I’m the photographer rather than the subject – it matched my hair though.

My niece has to try it on too. We also were shut down after this so no more silly hat pictures.

Tourist trolley led by horses. I’d never seen this before so it must be new.

Perfume bottles. Love them.

These windmills are everywhere in Solvang. I’m not sure if they work….

Flag

Danish Targis? Just kidding it’s a phone booth!

The cutest little bakery. In the window where it says ‘open’ is a mechanical rabbit rolling dough

Breakfast and Cocktails? YES!

I’d totes put my kids in these and/or would have worn this as a child

While we were out discovering Solvang we discovered Fairytale Lane!

This was our cute little trip to Solvang. We’d planned to visit the Ostrich Farm, the Lavender farm and Neverland Ranch (Michael Jackson’s home is just a few miles away). We didn’t even see half the town really before we left. Even though I’ve been several times, I always seem to find something new that I’d never seen before. I highly recommend it if you’re looking for something cute to do on a weekend. My mom, Grams and my mom’s boyfriend were tired and wanted to go home. Party poopers! That’s all I’ve got, so Farvel (Goodbye!)