At night, before going to bed, I read two route, seaside road and mountain side road.  Next day, due to heavy fog, I decided to take a moutain side road.  Soon fog cleared up.  Nothing there, but blue blue sky here. 

In the beautiful mts of the santa ynez valley lies the city of solvang, a Danish town hidden away in these beautiful mts of central calif. i had the chance to come here twice and explore and eat here. Solvang was founded in 1911 on 9,000 acres (36 km²) of formerly Spanish land by a group of Danish educators. The settlers of this city left for the west to escape midwestern winters. The city is home to some bakeries, restaurants, and merchants offering a taste of Denmark in California. The architecture of many of the buildings follows traditional German style. There is a copy of the famous Little Mermaid statue from Copenhagen, as well as one featuring the bust of famed Danish fable writer Hans Christian Andersen. A replica of the Copenhagen observatory Rundetårn in the scale 1:3 was finished in 1991 and can be seen in the city centre. Mission Santa Ines, one of the the 8 California missions that i have visited over the past 7 years, is both a National Historic Landmark and a California Historical Landmark. It is located near the center of the town, at the junction of State Route 246 and Alisal Road. if you ever get the chance to drive thru the mts to this town, try and stay a night and visit for as long as you can as it is rich in history and fun to visit. Solvang in Danish means "sunny fields".

I've been coming to Olsen's for years on our family road trips from Los Angeles and always try to stop if I am passing through to pick up a couple buckets of freshly baked Danish butter cookies. Mmmmmmm! On our road trip back to Northern California, I asked Julz and Jillian if they liked cookies and well, that was probably a silly question since who doesn't love desserts! HAHA. Neither of them had been through Solvang either so it was a perfect place to start our road trip adventures. We went inside the bakery and I thought Jillian was going to keel over from all the yummy stuff in the cases. In addition to my tub of butter cookies to go, I decided to get chocolate and strawberry meringue (pure sugar rush for our drive) and Julz got a Petit Four and chocolate covered Strawberry. And Jillian, well, our little Jillian opted for a Petit Four, Chocolate Cake, and some other thing they called a Swedish Delight which had Bavarian Cream inside I believe. See accompanying blog for more photos and the silliness that ensued! LOL All the desserts were yummy and we couldn't resist the urge to snap some additional photos on the camera phone and send them to our fellow TB's who could not be there! :D

Spent more than a couple of days trolling the Pacific Coast Highway from San Simeon to San Luis Obispo, and after a short detour through wine country, entered Solvang, which is like a whole new country. Somebody forgot to tell these people that they're not in Denmark. The place, originally 'discovered' by Danish immigrants has a bit of Denmark mixed into everything - Stores, hotels, restaurants, even the architecture of the houses. I was having doubts whether the people here even knew where they were. It was surreal, like entering a time machine or a theme park, what with the windmills and all, than an actual place inhabited by real people who actually lived and worked there. 

Checked in at the aptly named Kronburg Inn on 1440 Mission Drive. It didn't look like a hotel, or an Inn or a motel or hostel or anything where visitors come and go. It looked like one of those neat farmhouses plucked straight out of the Danish countryside and placed in Solvang. I fully expected a mooing cow with a bell going ding-a-ling around its neck to amble by. No such luck, and all I found was a helpful check-in desk who gave me a room with a view of the pool area and a free breakfast with plenty of chocolate cookies and steaming hot coffee. There's something about the Wine Country which brings out the tste in Coffee, or maybe it was just the long drive. Either way, I was beginning to like Solvang and the Kronburg Inn. The place is now a family run business, but until recently, it was a Best Westerm. Guess chain hotels are not taking over the world after all...

The room only enhanced my opinion of the Kronburg as a warm and friendly palce. It was spacious, well lit and clean. I mean, you could smell the freshness on the sheets and everything was spotless. Not very luxurious or packed with gizmos and gadgets, but quite adequate, and really comfortable. Light pink paint, a rather large plant, along with floral designs running along the top of the wall and in a painting hung on the wall above the headboard added to the bright and homey atmosphere. Room rates average around $116.

With the Santa Ynez Mountains and Santa Barbara beckoning, it would be hard to spend more than a night here, and even that is a bit of a stretch. But still, if you must stay in Solvang, you probably won't find any better Solvang hotels than the Kronburg Inn.

Info: 1440 Mission Drive Solvang CA 93463; 805-688-2383; www.kronborginn.com

The small town Solvang is just 40 min's drive from Santa Barbara. It did took me longer as I was looking for In and Out Burgers for quit some time, but I made it at the end!

So Solvang is a very nice small town that been founded about 100 years ago by a group of Danish people, and this is why it's look so non-american. It's a nice quiet place and it's didn't rain, so I had a walk in the small main st' just to get myself out of the car.

From here I went back to L.A, after all supper is waiting!!!

My sil (sister in law) is flyiing Virgin America from LAx to SFo today. Tess "mariteshorn" is going to pick her up and then its off to Tribu for lunch.  http://www.tribugrill.com/ Its one of the best on the pennesulia. AFter this its off to shop and then start our first Christmas in 20 years togather. well Tess has 3 more to come over from Cebu.

These picts are from her first week in the US!

That stretch of southern central / northern southern California gets really campy. You know how when places have not much going for them, they make up bizzare tourist attractions? Like those little towns in Nebraska or whatever that build "the world's largest donut statue" or whatever? It's like that. It's home to the Madonna Inn, probably the most famous theme-hotel ever -- you know, the kind where you can spend a wild night in the "Tarzan Room" and whatnot. There's a whole bunch of weird farms in the area including ostrich farms, emu farms and llama farms. And Buellton has decided to jump in the game and declare itself the home of split pea soup. Yes, split pea soup, which wikipedia says "has been eaten since antiquity; it is mentioned in Aristophanes' The Birds".

By dinnertime, Atousa and Deniro had fallen asleep in the backseat of the Yaris. JP and I were giddy from being in the car for too long. It only took one billboard for an ostrich farm to tempt us off course.

The Buellton Ostrich Farm is a campy little place selling tours and ostrich and emu related paraphenalia. I bought a cheesy tshirt and and a ostrich steak. We opted out of the tour, because you could see the ostriches from the side of the highway.

And then, of course, there's the king of all ridiculous tourist attractions, the city of Solvang, which claims to be a little peice of Denmark right in the middle of Spanish California. Except, not really. Solvang is one part Brothers Grimm, one part Disneyland, no parts Copenhagen and 100% ridiculous. Supposedly, its founding by Danish settlers in 1911 explains the German village style architecture, but I'd date the plaster looking buildings with painted on "wood" panels to, say 1972 or something. The place is so bad, it's almost really awesome. Almost.

We got dinner at a "Danish" restaurant (which served Kebab). We couldn't stop giggling over how cheesy the place was and how everything was "Danish".

Me, to waiter: "What's in the Danish Platter?"

Waiter: "Danish salad, Danish sausage and bread.... Danish bread"

Me: "OK, I'll have that."

Waiter: "Sure, you want french fries with that?"

Me: "... Are they *Daaanniiishhh* -French fries?"

Waiter: "... Um, sure. If you want them to be."

Me: "Are you Danish?"

Obviously Hispanic waiter: "... Southern Danish."

Apparently a lot of tours actually make this place a stopping location. Poor foreign tourists. I'd want my money back. Another awesome thing was this big SUV that kept going up and down the 3  block long downtown bumping hip-hop. That is so hardcore, douchebag. So DANISHLY hardcore.

Solvang made us so giddy we decided to write "Honk if You're Horny" on the back of the Yaris in toothpaste. Yah, I know, I know, we were that loopy. Our shame quickly caught up with us as people actually started honking at us.

By nightfall, we finally reached the Motel Six in Ventura. We got some booze at a local bar, put in our earlpugs to defend against De Niro's snoring and drifted off to sleep.

If you have a craving for German food, head to The Heidelberg Inn in Solvang. The menu offers everything from an array of Sausage plates and sandwiches to Wienerschnitzel and Suarbraten as well as American traditional foods. (Burgers, hot and cold sandwiches and Vegetarian options.) Don't miss the Apple Strudel! The best part was the outside patio / beer garden. I tried a Warsteiner dark beer (Dunkel) on draft for the first time. I’m hooked! The staff obviously enjoys working there, because the atmosphere and service they created was genuine.

We stop by over the Labor Day weekend. The staff was not very friendly.

We went to the restaurant over the labor weekend. The staff are not very friendly or attentive to their customers. The food was not good and pricey. They forgot to give us silverware. Subway down the street would of been a better choice.

Solvang is known more for wine tastings, but sometimes you'd rather have a big, cold stein of brew in an outdoor beer garden! This quaint looking place only has a few brews on tap, but the outdoor seating is perfect on a hot day, and the steins are the big, heavy, club-thumping, Oktoberfest kind. Great for people watching!

Most of the restaurants in Solvang serve a mix of Danish/German and/or American food, and most of the menu's seemed quite fattening and heavy, so we decided to opt for Mexican food instead. It felt a bit odd to be eating Mexican food in a Danish town, but Manny's turned out to be quite good. The outdoor seating was a big plus because the weather was almost perfect - sunny with a cool breeze. I ordered eggs with Chorizo, which was served with refried beans, hash browns, and corn tortillas. It was decent and pretty much what I was expecting. The sausage could have used more flavor and the hash browns were incredibly greasy, but overall I think this was a better alternative than most of the dining options in Solvang. Cheaper, too. There seemed to be only two people working here, so service was a bit slow at times, but still friendly.