2022 The Santa Ynez Valley – where the Heck is mom

Solvang (1 of 3)

The view out our living room window.

Windy and I are making a little outing to the Santa Ynez Valley, staying for two nights in Solvang.

The most photographed corner in Solvang.
Google Solvang and then do images, you’ll see. The wikipedia article is very good too.

On this day we mostly wandered around the streets looking in the myriad shops that make up the core of Solvang since I am after all with my little sister, a shopping maven of the first order. Shops, restaurants, wine tasting…we didn’t go to any of the fancy-pants wine tastings but at the end of the day we enjoyed a mulled wine at the High Roller Tiki Lounge across the street from our hotel.

Solvang (2 of 3)

Bakeries, so many bakeries, a highlight of Solvang along with the restaurants, shops, and wine tastings. We did notice that the bakeries all had basically the same items on offer and it would be fun to buy the same thing in each of them for a blind tasting.

These guys said they were the first bakery in Solvang and all the others were opened by people who worked here first.

Early-ish, meaning before 10 when the shops open, this is the main pedestrian drag, Copenhagen Street.

A view from the edge of town. It’s wonderful countryside living and the weather has been perfect.

Approaching Mission Santa Inez (19th of the 21 California missions).

Not much original left here but this is a piece of one of the original arches.

Lunch at Coast Range.

We enjoyed a visit to the Elverhoj Museum of History and Art.
We also had a swing through the Hans Christian Anderson museum.

We’ve walked everywhere since arriving yesterday but now we picked up the car to drive to this Must Do bakery (oh my oh my we had a delicious treat!), then a buzz through Los Olivos and Santa Ynez, and then we stopped at a market to pick up some dinner. What a lovely day.