A Family Visit to Danish-Influenced Solvang

In the 20-plus years I’ve called California home, I’ve heard Solvang thrown out there more than once, but had never been. My husband has entertaining memories of being dragged.. I mean taken.. antiquing with his parents when he was a kid. So when a family get-together looked to drop us in the center of the Danish tradition-based town, a family-friendly challenge was born. Solvang, which means "sunny field" in Danish, was founded 101 years ago. As the city grew, Danish architecture and traditions stuck, creating a little, fairly commercial slice of Northern Europe, about a half an hour north of Santa Barbara. My typical internet research didn’t return exactly promising results for visiting with kids. This was going to be one of those trips where we’d be making some of it up as we went along. Solvang’s a good place to introduce the kids to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little M...