Take this FTF family's advice on what you should see and where you should stay in the Danish-American community of Solvang , meaning “Sunny Fields” in Danish
Straight out of a Hans Christian Anderson fairytale, Solvang is the “Danish Capital of America.” Designated a “Preserve America Community” by First Lady Michelle Obama, it sits at the crossroads of California’s southern central coast in the Santa Ynez Valley, in the heart of Santa Barbara’s wine country. Since its inception in 1911, magic prevails in its quaint painted streets, tiled curio shops, and window-sill flower boxes. Fantasies appear from fanciful Little Mermaid statue (the original is by the water’s edge in Copenhagen), and the twinkling gaslit street lights that illuminate the town complete the enchantment.
Settle into one of the many family-friendly hotels in the area. The newly renovated Hotel Corque (800/624-5572) is a premier boutique hotel owned by the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. Spacious rooms and suites can easily accommodate up to a family of five, and amenities include a large outdoor pool, fitness center and complimentary continental breakfast. The Meadowlark Inn‘s (800/344-9792) cottages, many large enough to accommodate families of five, surround an expansive lawn. Amenities include a small pool, a picnic area under giant oak and redwood trees, and a complimentary continental breakfast. With a prior reservation, the Inn’s European hospitality also extends to well-behaved dogs.
All Around the Town
A delightful family weekend gets underway by taking in the beautiful Danish village onboard the Honen (replicas of Danish streetcars of the 1900’s) drawn by massive Belgian Draft Horses. For those who enjoymore of a workout, therea re wonderufl surry c-cov ered bikes that hold four to eigh passentgers at Surrey Cycle Rentals (805/688-0091).
Year-round outdoor family fun is popular at Solvang Park, Hans Christian Anderson Park, Solvang’s Skatepark for “boarders,” and the whimsical Sunny Fields Park.
If you’re here on a Wednesday afternoon, don’t miss the local Farmer’s Market selling farm-fresh produce, gorgeous cut flowers, plant and crafts. It takes place year-round between Mission and Copenhagen Drive on First Street.
Highlights
Quicksilver Ranch (805/686-4002), a ranch of miniature horses, set on 20 lush acres of green pastures, is a state-of-the-art training and breeding facility. These horses are popular because of their gentleness and affectionate nature.
The Elverhoj Danish Heritage and Fine Arts Museum (805/686-1211) s devoted to the cultural heritage of Solvang and its early history, and the Hans Christian Anderson Museum features a large collection of the author’s books and art, with hundreds of first editions.
Ostrich Land (805/686-9696) stretches across 30 acres, and is home to the largest birds in the world. The ranch produces ostrich chicks through breeders, enormous ostrich eggs, unique leather, feathers and ostrich meat.
Old Mission Santa Ines (805/688-4815) is a National Historic Landmark, dedicated in 1804, as the 19th in the chain of California Missions. Located right outside downtown, this active parish church offers tours and features Spanish artifacts, arrowheads and pottery.
Cachuma Lake and Recreation Area
The jewel of the Santa Ynez Valley is beautiful Cachuma Lake, where year round, outstanding services and recreational activities abound. Fishing, boating, a nature center displaying plants, wild life and Native American artifacts are your gateway to fun. From March to October, don’t miss the “Wildlife Cruise,” to view deer, bobcats, resident and migratory birds (including the American Bald Eagle) in their natural habitat. Call Cachuma Lake Eagle Cruises at 805-686-5050 for information.
In summer, weekends are especially busy with patrons of PCPA Theaterfest (805/928-7311) which presents musicals and other plays in the 700-seat open-air Solvang Festival Theater (805/686-1789). For three days in mid-September (specific dates vary by year), Solvang celebrates The Danish Days Festival.
Family Dining and Shopping
Enjoy Solvang’s Heidelberg Inn (805/688-6213) on Copenhagen Drive for authentic German, Danish and American dishes, Greenhouse Cafe at Petersen Village (805/688-8408) for Danish and American food served in a garden athmosphere, and the Red Viking Restaurant (805/688-6610) on Copenhagen Drive that specializes in authentic Danish smorgasbord. The landmark Mustard Seed (805/688-1318) on Mission Drive, set in a house built in 1911, serves comfy home-style cooking.
Savor the aromas of aebleskivers, delicious Danish pancakes served with lingonberry jam, mouthwatering irresistible authentic Danish pastries and sweets from the village bakeries like Olsen’s Danish Village Bakery, Mortensen’s Danish Baker and Danish Mill Bakery. Taste the fudge and candy that melts in your mouth and the yummy icecream from McConnell’s Ice Cream of Solvang on Mission Drive.
Enjoy browsing the more than 150 one-of-a-kind stores and boutiques selling clogs, handmade lace, classic toys, clothing and Danish novelties at at Petersen’s Village Square, Tivoli Square, King Atterdag Court and Copenhagen Square.
For the Adults
A romantic evening is yours in the Mirabelle Inn’s Restaurant, open Thursday through Sunday evenings. With European elegrance, Chef Mario Ramos presents his exquisite wine country cuisine, with awared wining wines and impeccable service. The Mirabelle Inn (800/786-7925)is a charming ten room boutique hotel
Adjacent to the Hotel Corque, celebrity Chef Bradly Ogden brings his culinary talent to his new signature restaurant and local hotspot Root 246 (805/688-9003)
Wine tasting around the valley includes: Firestone, Fess Parker Winery & Vineyard, Foxen Winery and Shoestring Winery.
The Oscar award winning Fox Searchlight 2004 film “Sideways” was shot around the valley, and still brings it worldwide attention. Los Olivos Cafe (805/688-7265) is where the cast ate and the film’s dinner scene was shot. The Sideways Dinner Menu that was served to the casat is offerreddaily from 5 to 9pm. It includes a glass of Los Olivos Cafe house Chardonnay or Pinot Noir, Butternut Squash salad, Cafe Salmon (served in the movide) or Cafe Pot Roast or Florentine Ravioli and topped with the Chocolate Scream, a homemade flourless chocolate cake, topped with homemade icecream and caramwel sauce. Wines enjoyed by the movi stars duirng their dinner are also available. In the Cafe’s adjoining space, The Wine Tasting Bar presents a selection of local and international wines by the glass and The Wine Merchant features over 500 local and international vintages and is the exclusive distributor of owner Sam Marmorstein’s Bernat Wine.
For lodging and further information contact The Solvang Conference & Visitors Bureau (800/468-6765).
Photos by Mel Greenberg
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I poured my heart and soul into this!!! Hope you people enjoy! =)
Wow, this is wonderful! You are so lucky to have gotten this opportunity. You looked absolutely gorgeous at the show and the red carpet. Thanks for sharing this, it really made me smile. I used to have the biggest crush on Joe Jonas.. hahah!
Amazing trip!
I hope that my story will inspire and enrich your lives; even if it doesn’t touch you as much as it has touched me. I hope that this will be passed on and that people will take a few minutes just to read what I had to say and try to be in the mind of these children. Try to change your day and see your house, your possessions, your income, and those many great things that you possess and find a way to share them with others. We all need a wakeup call sometimes, a message to straighten us out and look at the life we were given. I hope to go back next year to repeat the experience all over again and try to change myself even more, I love those children and I love their compassion and selflessness. Words can’t fully express what I felt or what I witnessed but my words are clear, these people see the world much differently than us, they treat possessions differently and they know how to work as a community.
This is about when my family and I took a trip down to Central Florida for our Family Vacation.
Hope you enjoy!
This was a vacation that taught me a lot about how my religion is organzied and gave me more appreciation for it.
I will never forget the time I spent in Germany.
I hope you guys enjoyed my story!
Best luck.
South Africa is this amazing country that not only is beautiful for its animals and scenery but for its people and for its ability to overcome the greatest oppression: apartheid, the discrimination of the majority. I am so glad I was given the gift of traveling to South Africa. It is an experience I will never forget!
It was a great trip!
I hope everyone who takes the time to read The Awakening enjoys learning about my bus ride to reality.
My typed essay about my vacation in Vietnam. It seem poorly written or should I say typed :\
Bryan Gray Europe Tour.
My vacation to Panama became suprisingly meaningful, contrary to what I had initially expected.
Thank you
This was a fun and yet difficult project i truely have enjoyed sharing my vaction with you.
Mahalo,
Have you ever been to Maine? What did you like best?
This is such an amazing story and essay!!
Their were many more memories from this trip that impacted me as much as the ones that were included, but I just didnt have enough room. So, I shortened it and tried to write the best description of the trip without exceeding the word limit. But the trip was, indeed, as remarkable as I said it was.
Washington is a really nice place. It has many museums and historical places. it also has very delicious foods. Chinatown was my favorite place to eat.
Thank you for this scholarship opportunity!
IB York was a great experience, and a great opportunity to explore new ideas and innovations
So now I head to college without my classmates but i will always have this wonderful experience.
🙂
This is one of my many travel adventure stories from my trip to Europe in the beginning of the summer. Besides Prague, I traveled to Berlin, Munuch, and Nuremberg in Germany, Innsbruck in Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and France. My favorite place was Switzerland, but my favorite story was the one I shared. I hope you enoy reading it as much as i enjoyed experiencing it!
I want everyone to be able to expericence something like I did.:) Everyone desevers happines!
I hope you enjoyed my travel blog and I hope you plan to take your mom to the Peaks of Otter Lodge for the best brunch you will ever eat. For more information click on this link:
http://www.peaksofotter.com/
Finished product. I love PERU!
This eye-opening opportunity has shaped my conviction toward making change and developing the community. It is a great pleasure to meet all those Leadership Award Honorees and other49 ANNpower fellows from 24 states in the U.S. I will continue to make change and build a dynamic community, excursively to ethnic, social, political gender aspects of advantage, as my milestone to become a great leader!
This eye-opening opportunity marks the culmination of my junior year. I am so glad to meet all those wonderful women leaders from all around the world and 49 other ANNpower fellows from other 24 states. I will continue to explore the world and make change with eagerness and confident, and overcoming disadvantage exclusively toward the milestone of a great leader!
I hope everyone enjoys my trip to Catalina and Ensenada!
This trip was the best trip regarding family time. It is unforgettable.
To see more photography from the trip, check out my photojournal: http://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Photojournal-of-My-Grecian-Travels/213497035367351.
What a testimony!! Thanks for posting. You don't know how impactful this is. Let Jesus keep using you for His glory. 😉
I was saved in August of 2009. I was in my parents's room and we all prayed for m, becuase I was tired of not having a desire for God. There I gave my life to Him and let Him be my Lord. I already excepted Him as Savior, but though it was a license to sin. Thatt day, though I wanted to repent of my sin and let God lead me. Lord and Savior go hand-in-hand. My life is changed. Now I have convictions and am learning so much about seeking God, because He is seeking me. It's awesome to live in the security and hope of knowing I will see Him one day in heaven. I am so glad He lives in me, because my goodness outside of Him is nothing. I don't know what I would do without Him.
Jesus used that park to bring you and your dad back together. How beautiful 🙂
Each place I go, I leave a peice of myself. And everyplace I go leaves a peice of itself in me. The people I have met along the way have changed me in the deepest way. Their lives have touched mine and I can never return to life as was usual. Likewise, my life has touched many along the way. It is my hope that nobody I meet along the way may return to life as was their usual. This is how each thead pulls coth and fabric together as we the people of the world cover it like a quilt. We must double stitch each peice so not to fall apart or leave holes. We need one another.
To whoever reading this, I am the person wearing blue shirt and white shorts, sligtly leaning on the panda bear statue.
My essay that talks about my experience traveling to Lima, Peru aims toward encouraging others who are not too familiar with it to visit and appreciate the fun life changing experience they're gauranteed to get.
What a great contest! Hope to see lots of terrific teen travel stories here!
It was difficult for me to type a 600 word blog about an amazing experience I had in the month of July. It was also difficult for me to choose certain pictures from the ones that I have chosen, so I uploaded the pictures of my time at NeiHu elementary school. I really wished that I could have used more sightseeing photos, but unfortunately, those were too big to upload.
This trip was amazing and it also tested who I am becoming as a person. Seeing the woman in Central Park living out her dream, to the woman selling fruit throughout the day; New York is made of dreamers and hardworking people. I loved it. Hope I get the chance to go back.
This was an amazing experience! I am so grateful for everything it taught me!!
From research, I believe the ice cream shop was called Eisdiele Eddy. More information about the exchange program can be found at http://www.aatg.org/study-trip-faq as well as at the bottom of the page at http://www.aatg.org/NGE-awards.
These Picutures are both of my own creation (one being an acrylic painting). When I took this picture at the western wall in Israel, the man in the photo was crying his heart out wearing a tattered down bath robe, I thought it would make for an intersting picture. So it did, it also inspired to me to create a painting in which I showed the world what I believe he really is. A man who is down on his luck but seems to still find peace in his life.
My sophomore year of high school I went to Donner Pass in California with a group called The Woods Project (www.thewoodsproject.org) . I had to apply to go , I was really anxious and scared that I wasn’t going to get. When I got my acceptance letter I was excited. I was also nervous because I had never been away from home for more than a week and The Woods project was going to last for two weeks. I had chosen to go to Donner Pass because I wanted to experience something new. I was going to go backpacking for one week and hiking the other. I had never gone backpacking before. When I told my friends that I was going backpacking they started to laugh because I am the smallest girl in my whole school and they didn’t think I was going to make it. Getting that response from my friends made me super scared of going to the trip. I thought I was going to die while backpacking!
My dad went to go drop me off at the airport and then he left. I was already scared and freaking out at the fact that he had just left me there and I did not know anybody! . I got in the plane to California and I was already regretting going on the trip. I was going to be with complete strangers for two weeks! When we got to California we all got split .There were three groups going to different places, one to Yosemite, another to Marine Headlines and then mine, to Donner Pass. I got in a van and that’s where I met the people who I was going to spend two weeks with. We were in that van for hours! When we finally got to our cabin we had to go up a hill to get to the door.
The first cabin we stayed in was named Clair Tappan Lodge. It was really nice . It was made out of wood, had a pool table, personal chef, jacuzzi and hot water in the showers. I loved it there! Too bad it only lasted for two days then it was time to go backpacking. They gave us our backpacking materials. I tried on the backpack and almost fell over. My backpacking week had started. We went up and down mountains, through rivers and lakes, and I thought we were never going to set up our tents. When it started to get dark we finally started cooking. The food we had was not good at all. We couldn’t bring a lot of food because of the bears and other animals. My second day of backpacking went better than the first. Everybody in my group started to know each other better and soon we became really close. We would sing while backpacking to make time pass faster and at night we didn’t want to sleep because we would play games. While backpacking I got to experience many things I hadn’t before. Even though I was the smallest girl going backpacking I was always the leader of the line because of my stamina.
When our backpacking week ended it was time to hike. I had gotten the hardest part of the trip over with so I knew hiking was going to be a piece of cake. We would hike in the morning and hanged out at night. It was the best experience I had ever had! When it was time to go back home I didn’t want to because I knew I would miss my friends.
To watch my video go to : http://youtu.be/FLd7W71EnyU
My experience as a first time camper.
i hope i win