The Danish town of Solvang, Part One

During our family vacation, Kendra and I decided to make the trip to the Danish town of Solvang, California. It's a cool little hamlet in the middle of the central coast of California. It has windmills on the buildings, storks in all the chimneys, and great danishes (sorry dad...no pretzels this visit!). One observation we made is that there was nothing really special to see in this re-created Danish town, just re-living memories of our parents taking us there when we were kids. This might be the reason anyone goes to Solvang in the first place...people just want to go back and see the place their parents took them on vacation. We drove almost an hour to take this picture of Mangogirl #3 in the shoe. You know why? Because we each have pictures in that same shoe from our childhood. Kendra went to "thumbelina needlework" with her mom when she was a little girl and now she's taking the mangogirls there. See what i mean? The entire town of Solvang is dependent on generational repeat business!
Don't get me wrong. It's a great place and I generally loved the visit. The food is great. Most of the shop owners are older Danish people complete with the accent. All the buildings have beautiful flower boxes in the windows and just looking at the architecture made me feel like I was getting ready to jump on the Matterhorn at Disneyland!
My kids have no visual concept of the Beatles Abbey Road album cover, but I did my best to recreate it. The truth is...I almost got hit by a car and the kids almost got run over, but they helped me get a pretty funny picture.

Mangoboy #4 was completely uninterested in anything we were doing...he enjoyed just sitting in the stroller and watching the antics of his dad and siblings...Continue to Part Two here.

Quietly making noise,
Fletch

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[theMangoTimes » the dani]

[...] part one of our visit to solvang is posted here. but that is not why the mangokids came here. no…they had only one thing on their mind…candy! so, we made the obligatory stop in the “danish candy shoppe” where i was able to snap a few pictures of even more ridiculous candy. [...]