A lifelong saga describing the joys and sorrows, trials and tribulations, of a not-so-ordinary Englishman from childhood to retirement and his search for true love and the perfect nest.
Category: Searching for the future
All articles pertaining to our travels in search of a new life
Brexit has made me an alien in my chosen land, but today I have been pleasantly reminded why I used to enjoy being a European. The Lower Silesian Voivodeship is that part of Poland closest to The Czech Republic and none of it more so than the appendix-shaped lower half of Kłodsko County where all roads, bar those heading north-east, lead to the nearby Czechian border. The landscape here, on both sides of the border, is determined by Góry Stołowe, a range of low mountains that exhibit some extraordinarily beautiful rock formations created by the vagaries of nature working away for millions of years on the sandstone that is the bedrock of the area. Having already witnessed several examples of these magnificent rocky outcrops during our local peregrinations, Celine and I spent the day exploring a little further afield, crossing that border in a westerly direction to Teplice nad Metují, to see for ourselves what the Adršpach-Teplice Rocks had to offer.
Looking skywards at the impressive height of the old pines is enough to give you neck-ache!
One could wax lyrical in describing the grandeur of the massive rock walls, the sweetness of the spring water, the abundance of wild flowers, mosses, ferns and lichens, the tenacity of young trees clinging to stone spires high overhead, the tremendous height of old pines reaching up to the sky from the forest floor and the exhilaration of scaling three hundred steep steps to take in the panoramic views from Strmen, the remains of a medieval wooden and stone castle precariously located atop one of the narrow spires, founded by the Lords of Skalice to command valleys far below. That task however, I am leaving to the tourist literature, the purpose of today’s writing being to briefly share my initial feelings about neighbourliness and the importance of friendship between nation states.
With all that is presently taking place along the border lands between Russia and Ukraine it has become clear to all the world that there are some very wrong-minded people who believe that the geographical shape of a country should be determined by the language of the local populace. And it is all too obvious that there are many Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine who totally disagree with this notion. For hundreds of years, Eastern Europe has been the arena for land-grabbing ventures by speakers of many tongues and now comprises a hotch-potch of countries and an even greater melange of languages that totally defy the logic of the premise of one country one language; yes, each country has its official language but unilingualism as such is virtually extinct.
In a similar vein, crossing many politically determined European borders these days rarely results in an immediate feeling of entering another country; not only does one language diffuse gently into the other, the landscape changes but marginally, and all that one needs to contend with are slight differences in road signage and perhaps one or two traffic laws. Having a Polish speaking polyglot for a wife may be slightly influencing my point of view, but also opens my eyes about the comparability between many of the Slavic languages; even I was able to see a few similarities between Polish and Czechian as we scanned a cafe menu board deciding how to assuage our hunger at the end of a fairly bracing and ultimately tiring walk up and down the trails.
The comparisons don’t stop with the language. The ever-varying scenery of forest, lovingly husbanded farmland, wooded hills and grassy valleys, prominent village churches of differing Christian faiths and, sadly, the scars of war, political uncertainty and battered economies, are all to be found on both sides of the border. Everyone we meet and chat with on our wayfaring adventures is equally likely to show fellow friendliness, whatever their lingo and ethnicity and all share our love of nature and enthusiasm for the open-air lifestyle.
What more could we all want than for this sense of goodwill, bonhomie and border blindness to prevail throughout this troubled planet? What hope is there for humanity if the current self-serving hostilities, both military and economic, continue to prevail?
Nature showing us how to cooperate as new growth clings to rock faces everywhere . . .. . . and cool spring water flows across the canyon floorDwarfed by nature’s handiwork, your tired scribe plods back along the boardwalk as he contemplates the sad state of the world!!
Soft white snowflakes are drifting gently down from a grey sky and brightening every branch, twig, dead leaf and blade of grass they alight upon. It is the end of November, the beginning of winter, and the second seasonal change we have experienced since our arrival in Poland in an early August summer. Growing up in countries where four defined seasons created a regular pattern in our lives, we have both been deprived in recent years of the wonders each change brought with it, and now we feel like kids again. It is as if, at last, the final piece of the jigsaw has fallen into place.
Finally . . . a nesting place with four well-defined seasons!!
Finding somewhere that we feel totally comfortable calling it “home”, after years of travelling to new pastures vainly scanning the windows of real estate agents and even getting to seriously consider a few of the offerings, is like opening the first page of a new book and just knowing one will read it effortlessly to the final word. After nearly two months sleeping beneath our new-found roof, we have finished reading the introduction, have raced through the preface and are most definitely ready to start on chapter one.
Metaphorical preliminaries over, I must admit the process has not been easy for me, an alien in a foreign land, unable to spout more than the most basic of conversational phrases, and totally reliant on Celine to carry all the burden of sorting through the bureaucracy that a house purchase entails. Nothing happened in quite the same way that it would have done “back home”, whatever home means to this wanderer who has spread his domestic life throughout England, Nigeria, Kuwait, Canada, England again and finally nine years in Southern California. The one constant factor of all those resting places was language, and now even that old stalwart has let me down. And all the while that we went searching for a nesting place “somewhere in Europe” we had both legally been “Europeans”, and of course that accursed Brexit has now made me an alien there as well. So that is yet another hurdle for me to overcome.
The day we first viewed the place that has now become home – first-, second- or only-home has yet to be decided – it was a fine sunny afternoon. We had breakfasted in our AirBnB digs a couple of hundred yards further up the hill, sharing our mealtime with a young deer feasting in the forest outside the kitchen window, and felt we were in paradise. We walked down to the address and, being “american,” our first surprise was to find that not the realtor, but the owner was going to show us around. This is not the best way to give a dwelling the once over, for whatever you start to look at closely, be it a dodgy looking electrical socket or cobweb-filled cupboard in the basement, the owner immediately tries to offer an explanation or else to distract you by pointing to some more wholesome detail of her “wonderful home” on which she has of course spent a fortune in renovations. One thing that had made the on-line description extra enticing, was that the house was “fully furnished” and indeed there were a lot of very desirable items of furniture throughout; however it was not long into the visit that “Pani Householder” – formal Polish always uses the title Pani or Pan when addressing anyone other than good friends or family – started to offer various significant pieces, items that we later realised, were simply too big to be moved into her new smaller apartment, at “much less than she had paid for them,” or words to that effect, and things that she simply didn’t consider to be of much value she would “gift to [us]” because we were “such nice people”.
However, there were so many upsides to what we saw that first day that although we swore to each other that we would definitely not pay the list price unless all of the furniture was included, we realised that the house ticked nearly every box for us and we did eventually come to an acceptable agreement and after some partially successful bargaining we did end up with enough basic furniture to be adequately comfortable and were not quite as much out of pocket as the owner might have originally desired.
For a long time, our house-buying mantra had included a view of either water or hills, and to satisfy my own rather greedy list of wants, a dog and a dock, a garden and a garage. While we may not have achieved total satisfaction – I’m afraid the dog is out of the question until we stop travelling altogether and I had already abandoned the dock idea after a six month trial period of being a boat owner in SoCal – but we do have a view of forest and the local park, we live in the foothills of Gory Stolowe, we have a small garden with enough leaves to rake up each year to make a healthy supply of compost, a garage big enough to keep the snow off our rental car and the added bonus of a smaller “garage” that will, in due course, become a very satisfactory “man-cave” (US) or “garden shed” (UK).
Buying what is certainly, for the time being at least, a second-home entails a lot more thought than simply moving house along with everything that one already owns, as one is obliged to think like newly-weds furnishing their first home from scratch. So we made long lists of our basic needs, and then made trips to the nearest hardware store – Leroy-Merlin in Klodsko, a few kilometres away – and the inevitable long drive to the nearest IKEA in Wroclaw, where, after making a bevy of bedding purchases, we realised their standard bed sizes are slightly different from the European norm, not enough to be a real problem, but somewhat irritating to the uninitiated.
Finally, just five weeks and two days after our first viewing, the day arrived when we could collect the key to the door and really call the place home. And that was when the fun really began. Up until that day all our plans and suppositions about what would need to be put where had been just ideas in our heads, all the little jobs that we knew had to be done were simply a list in our new home’s notebook, and suddenly, we found ourselves hard at work. All day and practically everyday since, our new nest has been a hive of non-stop activity and as the remains of autumn passed us by and winter arrived, we realise we have not once been for a walk in the glorious woods above the town that we had so enjoyed when we first arrived in this pretty little spa town. As we started into one job after another, Leroy-Merlin practically became a second – or should that be third? – home, whilst we almost became part of the family at another French conglomerate, the hypermarket Carrefour, that was handily next door.
Now some two months later, there are no more empty picture hooks on the wall, let alone the ugly scars that accompanied them, new lights have been hung from ceiling fittings that were just bare wires upon our arrival, pockets of someone else’s old rubbish have been grubbed out and consigned to the dumpster, and cobwebs and their occupants no longer greet us at every turn; our inherited garden rake has been gainfully employed removing numerous barrow loads of the aforementioned leaves, our shrubs, grapevines and strawberry canes are now cosily hibernating beneath leafy mulch and half a dozen bags of same are ready to start off the compost heap in the spring. Celine has been scrutinising the net rigorously and every room is furnished appropriate to its purpose, as cosy rugs take root everywhere and the local delivery persons become our friends.
But as much as we feel truly “at home” in our new abode, our return “back home” to SoCal is imminent. There are so many aspects of our lives needing to be re-organised as we decide exactly how to live with this somewhat un-planned situation, that I can see the next few weeks and months being even busier than the last! I just hope I can still find time for some writing.
February in SoCal has arrived before I ever had a chance to post the above thoughts on our new life and the intervening two months have indeed proved to be just as busy as predicted. As soon as we arrived back in this “neck of the woods” or, more accurately, “pleasant little corner of suburbia”, there being no woods whatsoever in our immediate vicinity to compare with those we so recently left behind, we started thinking about all the things – cold weather clothing, “can’t do without” kitchen utensils, family heirloom crockery, useful handtools unused for years and yet so needed in our new home, and an extraordinary variety of odds and ends that would personalize and add extra cosiness – thereby creating yet another unforeseen problem, just how much should we consign away to our as yet only partly proven new life, and how were we going to ship it all? I even gave unwarranted consideration to the somewhat hairbrained idea of shipping our hybrid Kia o’er the pond, packed to the gills with our “household effects”, but a little research quickly indicated the practicality “cons” enormously outweighed the “pros” of such a rash manoeuvre.
Christmas festivities and slight health problems associated to my way of thinking with the change of environment, came and went and the New Year arrived, signalling that one quarter of our breathing space was gone without any decisions being made. Most importantly, I had to face up to the reality that my new status as an alien in our new European homeland, required some serious action to ensure our planned seven-month long return visit was not going to be upset by my only being in possession of the basic 90-day visa that comes with the territory of non-EU travellers. It has taken me much of the last month to bring together all that is needed to apply for a Polish National D-Type visa and having finally received that all-important document, this, dear readers, is where I shall close this post. Here’s hoping our eternal optimism bears fruit and we shall soon be on our travels gain, though this time, with the objective of completing the feathering of our new nest.
If only we had known what was coming in 2020, we might have made more voyage hay in the pandemic-free sunshine that was 2019. How many other frustrated travellers around the world must be thinking the same way?!
Now, nearly one third of the way through 2021, we have at long last broken free from self-imposed restrictions and have once again slept away from home. Admittedly, it was only two nights and a measly three-hour drive from our suburban life in beautiful downtown Belmont Shore, a small oasis of relatively sane living in the corner of Long Beach, the southernmost quarter of the Los Angeles megalopolis. But what a delightful way to express our new-found freedom.
Solvang, sometimes referred to as the Danish Capitol of North America, is the nearest thing to a quiet little European town to be found in these parts. Founded in 1911 by a small group of Danes, disenchanted by the Mid-Western winters chosen by their immigrant forefathers, and anxious to live the life their families had left behind in Denmark, the town was built from scratch on almost 9,000 acres (3,600 ha) purchased from the Rancho San Carlos de Jonata Mexican land grant. Initially the town’s architecture was strictly reminiscent of traditional styles found in their homeland, even using traditional materials wherever possible; modern artistic ingenuity with concrete has allowed the visual style to continue throughout the town centre although these days there isn’t so much solid brickwork and real timber used to produce the desired effect.
One can always find an excuse for a holiday and for this particular journey of discovery the guilty party was my 75th birthday. Celine had booked us into the Hotel Corque, a fairly large, comfortable, stylish, so-called “boutique” hotel close to the town center and well within walking distance of the multitude of restaurants, cafés and eateries that abound. Our room was on the second floor, overlooking the pool and with delightful views of the lush green hills that surround the town in nearly every direction; whether or not that verdant image survives the hot dry summers we will have to determine some other day. One of the joys, for me at least, of finding ourselves in surroundings that are reminiscent of so many of our travels is the promise of once again sampling café culture, good coffee and home baked patisseries, and Solvang delivers all of those in plenty. The thought of fresh baked Danish pastries for breakfast, mid-morning snack time and afternoon revivers was irresistible; the only serious question was which of the many hostelries was most worthy of our attentions; the other consideration was how many such pauses in our short stay could our stomachs accommodate, without causing unwanted digestive trauma, let alone long-term bodily harm! A three-hour drive demands a reward for the participants and soon after our arrival, too early to check into our room, but armed with a map of The Village of Solvang thoughtfully provided by the hotel receptionist, we strode purposefully the fifty yards towards Copenhagen Drive where we found the promisingly named Danish Mill Bakery. In true Euro-café fashion, the pastries were temptingly displayed in long glass-fronted cabinets yet for some reason we decided to opt for the tastefully presented but rather uninteresting triple open sandwich platter, accompanied unfortunately by very weak filter coffee from a thermos flask due to the failure of their espresso machine. This was altogether an unfortunate mistake as this sixty-one-year-old establishment has good reviews, is comfortable and quaint and we even had a talking mannequin of an old moustachioed Danish pastry chef sitting next to us; I am sure their pastries are every bit as tasty as many to be found in Solvang, but our poor choice of comestibles did kill any inclination to return.
Our travellers’ hunger appeased, we were suitably fortified to continue on our tour of the town, or perhaps village is a more suitable epithet for this compact little community of around six thousand seemingly contented residents. There is a touch of Disneyland about Solvang that is perhaps inevitable in such close proximity to Hollywood, and yet it manages to avoid being tasteless. As well as the multitude of eateries, there are plenty of interesting shops to browse selling everything from recycled clothing to fine art, quite enough to make a slow stroll through the main streets a pleasurable pastime; but we still had a mission which would be satisfied appropriately at the far end of Mission Drive, in Olsen’s Bakery. Whilst the Danish Mill Bakery was, to be honest, a bit of a tourist trap, Olsen’s Bakery was the real McCoy. The baked goods looked and smelt totally enticing and before we had even tasted their wares we had placed an order for two loaves of Swedish Limpa bread and an aeblestrudel to be ready for our departure two days later; and after a few minutes drooling over the tempting array of pastries we opted to stop longer and share a Bear Claw and a “cream puff thing”, washed down with a couple of very welcome caffè lattes.
It was a beautiful day for a stroll around the town, warm sun ameliorated by a cooling breeze, and it being mid-week and out of season we took pleasure in the lack of crowds until finally the weariness that results from any long drive on California’s freeways took its toll and we decided to take an early night, determined to “do the town” properly the next day. Fortune was not completely on our side as we were caught out by the one and only fault issue we had with the hotel. Beautifully equipped with all “mod cons”, one little item, a very neat personal bedside light built into the lush headboard, decided it was definitely not going out of its way to embellish the hostelry’s image any further than necessary and to our great discomfort, several times during the night managed to turn itself on unaided by human intervention. The first time was before “lights out” and the bellhop who was sent up to resolve our problem reckoned a good hard thump would do the job, which it did for a while. One beef we both have with many hotel rooms these days is the plethora of little lights that serve no obvious purpose other than to annoy the light sleeper; the bed-side radio needs to remind us that it is always there at our beck and call; the TV not wishing to be forgotten in the middle of the night, winks its red light at us across the room; the fire detector proves it remains alive up there on the ceiling by flashing another light from about where the panhandle of Ursa Major should be located to those back sleepers amongst us; and inevitably management leaves a message of welcome on the internal phone, indicated by an otherwise insignificant little orange beacon that only becomes visible as one’s eyes become accustomed to the dark. Personally, unlike my dear bride, I am one of the lucky people who can usually manage to ignore all of these small nuisances, but even in my deepest sleep the sudden flashing on of a high intensity LED reading lamp focused directly onto my right eyelid – I am a left side sleeper – left me quite frazzled after two or three repeats.
Somewhat surprisingly we did actually sleep not too badly overall, the final flash to my eyeball serving as a seven o’clock alarm for me which I resolved, for a while, by cunningly smothering it with my luxuriously soft, well-puffed pillow. COVID restrictions meant no breakfast was being served in the hotel and after a leisurely long awakening, we eventually started our more detailed exploration of the town with a stop at another of the more highly recommended coffee shops, Mortensen’s Danish Bakery, where we sat out on the patio breaking our fast with an apple Danish, a custard puff and a couple of lattes as we observed the town’s clientele, not just a few of whom wore clothes of sufficient size to remind us to go easy on the pastries.
Suitably fortified by our morgenmad, we opted to check out the local galleries, the first of which, Stix’n’Stones, was filled with so many wonderful pieces of art as to seriously threaten our annual budget. But we were on a birthday treat and we were both equally enjoying browsing around this amazing collection of artisan craftsmanship, so when our visit ended it was no surprise that we needed to ask the young sales lady to look after our well-filled bag of goodies until our return to the hotel later in the day. And that was just the start. Two doors further along Copenhagen Drive, the Pavlov Art Gallery had some fascinating thought-provoking paintings by the eponymous young Macedonian artist, inspired by his studies of philosophy, as well as a series of beautiful landscape photographs printed on canvas, by his wife Iris. Still heading East, our attention was drawn to three wooden carvings of the Solvang Founding Fathers in the window of a building that started out life a century ago as the Santa Ynez Valley Bank. Renamed The Copenhagen House, this edifice is now home to The House of Amber, a large store that encompasses an impressive display of modern Danish design including everything from an enormous collection of Hoptimists, funny little spring-necked creatures of all colours, shapes and sizes that nod at you mesmerisingly, through to very smart Bering watches and the elegantly sculptured silverware of Georg Jensen; but the most interesting corner of the store is the little Museum of Amber, wherein one can discover the provenance of these beautiful natural gems that started out life millions of years ago as simple blobs of tree resin.
No old town or village is really complete without a good bookstore and the Hans Christian Anderson Museum performs that function admirably. Its main attraction may indeed be the well-informed life and history of that clog maker’s son who became such a renowned author of fairy tales and other stories; but it also houses its alter ego, The Book Loft, a veritable cornucopia of new, used and rare old books, in at least four different languages; I could have happily spent the rest of that day just browsing through the higgledy-piggledy arrangement of shelves on two or three different levels and breathing in the musty aroma of well-thumbed pages.
It had been our intention to maintain some sort of gustatory deprivation for most of the day, as a celebratory dinner was on the early evening timetable; alas, hunger defeated those noble aims as we looked into the window of Solvang Restaurant and realized we had not yet tried the delights of aebleskiver. Variously described as odd-shaped pancakes, waffles and donut holes these oft-mentioned Danish snacks are in fact balls of dough mixture, slightly crispy on the outside and light and fluffy within after being cooked in a cast-iron skillet that resembles an egg-poacher, and traditionally served hot with raspberry, strawberry, black current or blackberry jam; what is more they are actually very, very tasty. But gourmands as we are when out on the loose, we realized our hunger was still lurking and decided to reinforce our midday snack with a slice of tasty, if perhaps a little too salty, fried medisterpølse, accompanied by a Hoppy Poppy IPA from Figueroa Mountain Brewing Co.
Weary from our happy meanderings we had one more necessary stop at the well-stocked Solvang Shoe Store, to buy me a pair of much needed sneakers and seek out some sandals for Celine; my needs were fairly quickly satisfied, but the ever-helpful manageress must have pulled out a couple of dozen boxes of shoes from her store in the back of the shop before we concluded the second objective simply wasn’t going to be achieved that day. Whilst having a good shoe shop is not exactly high on the tourist bucket list, its presence shows that Solvang is much more than just a tourist attraction, for there must be nothing worse than living in a town lacking the basic essentials
No birthday outing is properly fulfilled if it fails to include a special dinner and we were well pleased with our decision to place the responsibility for that exercise in the hands of the chef and staff of Mad & Vin, inside the Grandsby Hotel on Mission Drive. A ten-minute stroll from the Hotel Cirque in the cooling evening air, the Mad & Vin (which means “food and wine” in Danish) is a smart little dining establishment where the service is suitably discreet without being unfriendly, the atmosphere subdued without being depressing and where the food, if our choices were anything to go by, is tasty and well presented. Celine had a Flat Iron Steak which although slightly too pink upon its first arrival at the table, was seared to perfection a couple of minutes later, and my Cioppino was everything one could ask of the dish, a generous selection of fresh tasting local fish and shellfish swimming in a lightly spiced tomato and white wine sauce accompanied by fresh baked sourdough bread; lubricated by a couple of glasses of Stag’s Leap chardonnay, and topped up with generous portions of banana bread pudding and a flourless chocolate cake, this happy couple wended their contented way slowly back along the now quiet streets, contemplating the pleasant idea of perhaps one day living in such a welcoming community.
Next morning, after a night only “slightly” disturbed by the noise of a circulating “copper chopper” – only our second sighting of the “fuzz” in our 36 hours in the village – we awoke to another beautiful day, clean clear air, a coolish breeze and delightful views of green hills in all directions. Once checked out we went for a short drive around some of the nearby residential neighbourhoods before making a second stop at Olsen’s Bakery for our morning coffee and Danish, and not forgetting to collect the loaves of limpa bread and the strudel we had ordered so soon after our arrival in town. Then a bit more residential research out towards some of the rolling countryside surrounding Solvang and then, before hitting the road home, a final sortie into New Frontiers Natural Market Place to stock up our home larder with some of the freshest organic fruit and vegetables we have seen in California.
Friday afternoon is not the best part of the week to have to pass through downtown Los Angeles, and my mood had changed quite radically by the time we arrived back in Belmont Shore. However, we brought home some very good memories from our truly delightful birthday break in the almost European village of Solvang, with every intention of making a return visit before too long. Whether or not it will prove to be the end of the rainbow in our search for the future remains to be seen but it is certainly worth placing on the “distinctly possible” list. We just have to wait for today’s crazy seller’s housing market to settle down again to offer a more equable relationship between buyer and vendor.
This year has seen a distinct change in our travelling habits as we haven’t once stepped off continental North America. I nearly said continental USA but that would have been to ignore the wonderful week back in April when we set foot in my old stamping ground of Ontario, Canada.
North America is a vast continent, shared by two of the largest countries in the world by area, offering such an endlessly diverse mix of plains, mountains, forests, prairies, coastlines, weather, nature, ethnic groups, cultures, cities, towns and villages, that it must surely be an easy task to find the ideal place to lay down new roots that will satisfy the aspirations, needs, desires and longings of two not too dissimilar people who are held together by a strong bond of love and a determination to live out the autumn of their lives in peaceful harmony. Well life is never quite that simple, for as well as the aspirations and needs and so forth that we bring into the search for the perfect piece of ground to start the planting process, tagging along behind us are our preconceived notions of what is ideal, acceptable, bearable or untenable, based on the quite varied lessons that life has presented to each of us in the past.
Those who have followed earlier episodes of this blog will know Celine and I have travelled far and wide over the last few years and more than once have been sorely tempted to buy our “ideal” home in the sun, by the sea or in some beautiful corner of a foreign land. Much closer to home, and just a few short weeks after taking up residence in the “promised land” – a.k.a. Southern California, I was filled with excitement at the idea of moving up-country and buying a house in Big Bear Lake, a small town nestling in the woods high up in the San Bernardino Mountains, enthusiasm that only waned nearly a year later when we visited again on Labour Day weekend and, being a rags and sticks fan, I was appalled by the mass of noisy jet skis and power boats churning up the placid waters of the eponymous lake . . .!!
Back in April we made a fleeting visit to Asheville, NC, and being quite taken with that small city, our most recent travels took us there once again for a closer look. It being another community whose charms arise from its location among mountains and midst a vast sea of deciduous forests, it seemed appropriate that we should re-visit when those woodland charms were approaching the end of their multi-coloured autumnal glory and the renowned fresh mountain weather might be starting to show its less desirable side, that of cool winds, grey cloudy skies and that phenomena we miss so much in Southern California, a good dollop of rain every few days. And we were right on the mark, except for the several days of glorious warm sunshine, and the autumn colours, for which the Appalachian Mountains are renowned, had kindly delayed their magnificence, the result of an unusually dry summer, a phenomena with which we Californians are all too familiar.
We had found accommodation for our two-week stay through HomeExchange.com, though were unsuccessful in finding a simultaneous reciprocal exchange with someone who fancied leaving the relative peace of Asheville for the hustle and bustle of the West Coast, “No surprise!” according to our hostess. The house was in the Haw Creek subdivision, a ten-minute drive west of the city centre. Our first morning we breakfasted watching jays and cardinals flitting among the branches of the beautiful trees outside the kitchen window, and the squirrels doing what would prove to be their daily balancing act as, nut in hand, they pranced from picket to picket along the garden fence. Through a gap in the trees we had a view of the nearby mountains, and with the warm sunshine radiating out of clear blue skies, it seemed like we had arrived in paradise, certainly as far as this country loving boy was concerned.
Typical view from within Asheville city boundaries – this one taken a hundred yards from our HomeExchange abode.
Not completely forgetting why we were there, we eventually managed to drag ourselves away from nature’s spectacle and drove into the city to delve deeper into its offerings than we had six months previously. But getting a real feel for a place in just two weeks is a challenge at the best of times, and when seriously contemplating the idea of moving one’s life there, lock, stock and barrel, the task feels impossible. We did our homework before we arrived and having sought out the services of a knowledgeable local realtor, to whom we had given some ideas of what we thought we were looking for, we had spent many happy hours perusing a long list of wonderful looking properties which we had boiled down to a baker’s dozen to view during our stay. This in itself was a fairly hugger-mugger process, as we had only a sketchy idea of the neighbourhoods around the city and very little feel for their relative desirability.
However, we had a free day before our viewing schedule started and so we began our visit by doing the tourist thing, exploring the River Arts District where one can wonder in and out of galleries, chat to the working artists and of course expand one’s own collection of art as the mood takes one. It also turned out to be a great way to meet locals and to quiz them about their experiences of living in and around the city; no point in asking them why they chose Asheville, as it really is an artist’s mecca. In the late afternoon we happened upon a delightful small farmer’s market located next to the All Souls Pizza Parlour car park, and enjoyed chatting to various artisans, again many of whom had moved to Asheville in the last ten years or so and were totally captivated by the place.
The next afternoon we met up with our friendly realtor, Laurie Reese, viewed six houses of which at least four were totally damp squibs, another was “OK” and only one actually grabbed us. Actually the last house we were due to visit was so awful from the outside, and so obviously different from the MLS description, that we didn’t even get out of the car; it did however, leave us close to the village of Biltmore and we took the opportunity to partake of afternoon tea at the seemingly historic Grand Bohemian Hotel, the interior of which looks like a late Victorian hunting lodge, only to discover it is very much a twenty-first century construction.
The city of Asheville nestles in a valley, surrounded by thickly wooded hills with views of distant mountains in every direction. The city centre is quite compact and very walkable, but we had difficulty finding any suitable homes for sale in the few residential districts within the perimeter created by Highway 240 and the French Broad River. From the list of “possibles” that Laurie had provided us, I had upgraded to “favourite” status one gracious older home in the “desirable” Kenilworth district, which was a real disappointment, and another lesson learned about interpreting MLS descriptions. The house would have been very elegant when it was built in the 1920’s and the trees surrounding it would have been much smaller allowing far more light into what had become a very dark home. The “garage” might indeed have been accessible, or even usable, once upon a time, and the “delightful architectural details of the interior” were probably very up-market in its era. But, sadly, the sinking south corner and its associated structural cracks, and the cramped old-fashioned kitchen, convinced us that a top-priced fixer-upper was not what we were looking for. In our previous short visit to the city we had discovered the very attractive, but we presumed rather expensive, Montford Historic District, just north of the highway but still nominally walkable to the city centre, and so we were quite excited when, on our second day of viewing, Laurie found a very reasonably priced three storey home literally a couple of blocks away from our two favourite stores, Trader Joe’s and that other one whose name has now become tarnished by having become part the burgeoning Amazon empire. And what a disappointment that was, demonstrating once more the dangers of judging a book by its cover.
We soon realised we needed to look slightly farther afield and that’s where things started to become complicated. How far away from the centre were we prepared to consider living? Our hopes of being able to walk into the city centre had been somewhat dashed and we both started to accept the idea that a five or ten minute drive, such as we were by then doing regularly from our temporary residence in Haw Creek district, had to be one of the conditions of living in Asheville. Laurie showed us some amazing houses that were positively ideal but, alas, never quite perfect. The beautifully maintained house on Skyview Court, built precariously on the side of an extremely steep wooded mountainside and having the most fantastically gorgeous views from its three balconies, from sunrise to sunset, would have been ideal for the two of us thirty years ago when we could still bound around like a couple of gazelles, and my Canadian chain-saw wielding skills were at their prime. But the threat of our advancing years, mine in particular, and the hair-raising descent just to get into the basement workshop, or to fetch a load of wood for the lounge stove, made it a complete non-starter. Such a shame as I could really imagine us sitting on the balcony, each with a glass of wine to hand, watching the red-tailed hawks circling below us, as we swapped stories of our beautiful life together while the sun slowly disappears down behind the tall pines to our right.
Anyway, dreams aside, the practicalities of life in Asheville are what we came to consider, part of which could include domiciling ourselves in one of the outlying small towns we had begun to hear so much about. Weaverville is one such town about ten miles due north along highway 26, a pleasant fifteen to twenty-minute drive from the city centre, through rolling green countryside. With a population of around four thousand, this compact little town is really more of a homely village and has all the characteristics of same with the usual mix of realtors, banks, cafes, a pizza parlour and an Italian restaurant. It is very walkable, most of the streets have sidewalks, a small lake with a fountain greets you as you enter the town along Merrimon Avenue, the famous Well-Bred Bakery and Café is there to satisfy the inner man and the ‘everything-for-the-apiarist’ store, Honey and the Hive, is waiting to sweeten everyone’s lives. It has all the essentials, even a small shopping centre on the outskirts with one of the chain supermarkets – sadly not one of the two I mentioned earlier – and from our few short experiences there, is replete with friendly residents. And we even found an absolutely perfect house, well within our budget, five minutes’ walk from the town centre, a delightful garden, views across the valley, a sunny south-facing aspect, and in a very presentable neighbourhood; for some reason the owner, who was also the realtor, wanted to sell so that he and his wife could move into one of the posher districts of North Asheville to be closer to town, which of course seemed nonsense to me, though I know Celine was slightly sympathetic to the idea! All in all, to me the little town looked like an ideal place to plant one’s roots . . . or was it?
Perhaps a comparison with another apparently popular little town was called for. And thus, one rather damp, rainy day, we drove to Black Mountain 16 miles north-east of Asheville along Highway 40. Very different from Weaverville, Black Mountain with twice the population appeared to be decidedly more touristically inclined with its many eclectic shops, seemingly busier in spite of the wet weather, and with less of a “village” feel about it. It had a fair selection of eateries, many of which were closed by mid-afternoon, so we ended up eating simple wholesome fare at Trailhead Restaurant, a hangout for the locals judging from our noisy fellow diners. We did a bit of gift shopping and then took a short drive around the residential areas, but overall the town left us less than impressed and I believe all three of us – we had Celine’s brother Darius staying with us for a few days – decided Weaverville was probably the nicer of the two.
Although house-hunting was a major reason for our visit, there was far more that we needed to learn about life in and around Asheville. We checked the countryside by taking a few trips out of the city and a short test drive along the famed Blue Ridge Parkway. For our first sortie we headed in the direction of Knoxville, Tennessee, to meet old friends for lunch. The drive was initially viewless for it does indeed rain at least a couple of days a week, bringing mist down low over the hills, and the choice of eatery was somewhat unusual, being a Russian-American roadside café called Grill 73 just off the highway of the same number, somewhere outside the town of Newport. However, the food turned out to be delicious, the company was good, and we had our first experience of driving through the Great Smoky Mountains.
Our next excursion was more focused on the surrounding countryside as we set out to drive the I-441, the one highway that goes right through the middle of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park from Cherokee to Gatlinburg. We stopped for a coffee and pee break at the Oconaluftee River Visitor Centre and then heading northwest we soon saw our first caribou resting in the woods across the river. This was when I learnt that Park Rangers are much more than good-looking gals and guys in Smoky-the-Bear hats, as I got severely reprimanded for foolishly trying to get closer for the perfect photo; perhaps the signs saying “Keep off the field when caribou are present” should have given me a clue! From there onwards the road went steadily uphill, winding more and more, and offering us some wonderful lookouts with glorious views across miles of autumnal colours as the 130+ different species of trees, for which the region gets its reputation as the most bio-diverse part of the country, fluttered their red, yellow and scarlet leaves for all to admire. Our objective was Clingman’s Dome, at an elevation of 6,643 feet, the highest mountain in the Smokies and the highest point along the Appalachian Trail (read Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods” to learn more). Luckily it is very auto-accessible, although the parking is so limited it must be chaotic in the height of the tourist season, and once parked near the Information Centre we had an easy half-mile paved trail to take us up the final 300ft to the summit and its 45ft high observation tower from where one has a magnificent 3600 panoramic view of the surrounding mountains. It was while we were atop that tower that I began to have fears that living in Asheville or that general area, one could possibly become punch drunk with the sight of not much else than trees. A slightly scary thought to one who professes to love the idea of living in the countryside and has just started to become acquainted with the natural beauty of western North Carolina.
House-hunting is a lot easier than hunting for good pictures of the prolific local wildlife; this caribou was relatively obliging but the Park Rangers weren’t so happy!
To complete the day’s experience, we finished the drive through the Smokies finally passing through, but with no wish to stop, the singularly unattractive city of Gatlinburg, an awful concoction of the worst, most grossly touristic parts of Niagara Falls in Canada, Las Vegas, Blackpool in England and Disneyland, plus every other tourist mecca the sane savvy educated tourist tries to avoid, before eventually finding ourselves all alone on the most untravelled road imaginable. Highway 32, the link between Highway 321 and the I-40, is hardly even a two lane road for most of its length as it twists and turns its way through a myriad of lonely forested hills and valleys, the undisturbed fallen leaves carpeting the tarmac, and making me for once begin to doubt the veracity of Google’s direction finding capabilities, especially as dusk was fast approaching and memories of the 1972 film “Deliverance” started to flash through my brain accompanied by the sound of duelling banjos! But what a wonderful drive it was, ending at the Walters Hydro-Electric Plant on the pigeon River as we crossed the border back into North Carolina, joined the I-40 and drove home on normal roads once more.
On our penultimate day, we drove south-east along highway 26 to the Tryon Equestrian Centre, to satisfy brother Darius’ abiding passion for horses. We were lucky enough to visit on a day when trials for an upcoming major event were taking place, so we did see some impressive horsemanship, but otherwise the venue was fairly dead, so we soon headed back up the road to Hendersonville, another town that some people compare favourably with Asheville. Their implication is that it is perhaps a little more refined, but the town-wide power-cut that greeted us did nothing to confirm that view, the dead traffic signals causing us one rather alarming near-incident. Powerless, practically all the shops, cafés and restaurants had closed for the day, all the more unfortunate as the town was preparing itself for its annual Halloween Parade that evening. One brave lady working the afternoon shift in the Black Bear Café bucked the trend and was kept extremely busy as we and everyone else in town sought out her coffees and croissants.
A chance conversation at Tryon had elicited the advice that we really should visit Dupont State Forest whilst we were in the area of Hendersonville, and as the weather was so obliging, sunny and cool, we went back into the countryside to see Hooker Falls and Triple Falls. The 10-15 ft drop of the former is not that impressive to the casual observer but is evidently a favourite testing ground for the bravado of local kayakers and we watched a half dozen brave souls as they projected their little polyethylene craft over the edge of the cascade, bobbing up from the maelstrom of foaming water a few seconds later. The Triple Falls however were a wholly different visual spectacle. A brisk ten minute walk up from the car-park took us to a lookout where we had a dramatic view through a break in the trees across the valley to a series of three successive cascades thundering down the rocky hillside towards us and being forced to take a sharp right turn as it reached the river below; there’s certainly no lack of water in these hills!
Triple Falls in Dupont State Forest
Another town said to be popular with retirees moving into this region, and conveniently located on our road home, is Brevard where we did our usual quick drive around and walk through as the sun started to disappear behind the surrounding hills. Less than an hour’s drive from Asheville the countryside around Brevard was less densely wooded and the airy feeling of rolling horse-country was in some ways a welcome change from the never-ending pageant of autumn colours with which we had, by then, become familiar. Unfortunately, the town itself appeared a little too much on the tranquil side, bringing on fears of early, rocking-chair induced senility, something that Asheville could never be accused of doing.
Back in our cosy Home-Exchange dwelling once more, we contemplated all the other things we had done to make our two weeks stay so entertaining: an evening of culture when we watched the Russian Ballet performing Swan Lake, delicious eats at just a sampling of the city’s eclectic mix of fine restaurants including Spanish style tapas at “Curate”, “Rhubarb” where we ate outside while enjoying the antics of a trio of hill-billy musicians playing tin-can double bass, spoons and banjo on the sidewalk, and slightly more refined dining at “Chestnut”, plenty of enjoyable walks along city streets window-shopping and admiring the many Art Deco buildings, seeing black bears, red foxes and grey wolves up close in the West NC Nature Centre, taking afternoon tea at the Grand Bohemian Hotel in Biltmore village, and seeing a wild black bear wandering peacefully through someone’s garden on the slopes of Mt Patton. And we didn’t sample any of the breweries, visited only a fraction of the many art galleries, and completely failed to find time for any of the museums or one of the many concerts on offer.
Even so late in the season, it was easy to imagine that with so much to offer, Asheville becomes very busy during peak holiday periods and so it is also understandable why so many locals complained about the traffic, parking difficulties and so forth, “compared to how it used to be”. But to someone coming from the frenetic lifestyle of Southern California the traffic was hardly noticeable, apart from the evening rush hour when there would be a few more than the usual half dozen cars waiting with you at red traffic lights and road rage was totally absent. It is a city in which the slower pace of life and the laid-back atmosphere contribute to quickly making one feel comfortable and at home. But do we still want to live there? That is a moot question, for much as we enjoyed Asheville’s many qualities, we are still unsure whether we will also enjoy its cool winters and, even more fundamental, we still need to convince ourselves that a major deracination is what our lives really need.
After a couple of weeks, I was sorry when the time came to leave Asheville behind us, but we had planned to extend our trip down into South Carolina, to visit my son Tom and his family who relocated there six months previously, and sample the delights that Charleston had to offer. This time we used the services of HomeAway.com to find ourselves a cosy little single storey duplex in Mt.Pleasant as our base for the week. About mid-way between Tom’s new home and the centre of Charleston we were well placed to both enjoy the family and get a brief taste of life in that land of reputedly hot humid summers, mosquitoes and hurricanes. November was of course the wrong time of year to experience any of those hazards, so we were able to enjoy ourselves unthreatened. Charleston is a compact city full of elegant old homes from its Colonial days and we enjoyed our peregrinations through its narrow streets, mostly on foot, but once ably supplemented by a ride in a horse-drawn carriage with a very erudite driver who delighted us with his intimate tales of the lives of the homes and owners alike. We took a few trips out of the city, to a couple of plantations, to Seabrook Island, and one day we drove down to Savannah GA, another fascinating old Colonial city. With reminders at every turn of either the ignominious defeat my British countrymen took in the War of Independence or the part the locals played in the American Civil War, history abounds everywhere. These attractions together with Charleston’s large protected harbour, and the sailing opportunities that offers, the miles of beautiful clean beaches and a cost of living considerably lower than they had left behind in SoCal, it was easy to see why Tom and his family decided to make their move. But the surrounding countryside is flat and low-lying, wetlands abound as many rivers wind their way through the swampland, making a complete contrast with where we had spent the previous fortnight. Add the three aforementioned negative threats to a peaceful life into the account and I still know which of the two I personally prefer.
A swampy lake in the grounds of Magnolia Plantation beside the Ashley River; we were surprised to learn that rice rice was this plantation’s main crop in the eighteenth century.
Undeterred by our continued indecision, Celine and I always enjoy our travels and are off again in a few months, this time for a prolonged journey to Poland, to meet family and friends and for me to experience more of Celine’s homeland. Perhaps upon our return we will ruminate further about the uprooting idea. Who knows, we might probe into the possibility of buying a second home in Poland, or even consider moving there! After all the world is our oyster and we are both still young enough to wield a sword to open it! (Thanks to Mr Shakespeare and his “Merry Wives of Windsor”.)
The main source of my dissatisfaction with living where we do in Long Beach, California is the close proximity of Los Angeles and all that entails, never-ending urbanisation, high traffic volumes, too many people and no real countryside out of sight and sound of all the aforementioned. There are, however, pluses about life in this state, the weather being the first to come to mind and also the one that is probably foremost in Celine’s mind when we start to discuss our nest-building options. We have other reasons for not wanting to leave here in too much of a hurry, mostly centred around family, some of whom are a delight to be with as they grow up far too fast, others who we just like to be around and one who needs our ongoing support as he fights a vicious tumour. And finally one does kind of get used to the place one has become familiar with over the years.
The question, therefore, is “Can we overcome my dissatisfaction without also losing out on the pluses?” and so last week we decided to look around in our own backyard and drove a hundred miles north of here to Ojai (pronounced OH-hy), a small town on the edge of the Los Padres National Forest. The derivation of the name is variously said to be either from an indigenous word meaning nest,rather appropriate for two people who have spent the last six or seven years searching for a new place to do just that, or it may be from the Chumash word “Awha’y” meaning moonwhich also has good vibes for Celine’s name in Greek is Selene, who was the goddess of the moon. Whichever way you look at it there has to be some reason why this place came up on our radar and sceptic though I am, I’m quite happy to read the runes if what they say suits my way of thinking!
Once we got clear of the oilfields just north of Ventura, the drive along Highway 33 into Ojai Valley gave all the right vibes as we got closer to the mountains, the road changed from a dual carriageway to a single lane, the vista became greener and with less hectic traffic your scribe became calmer. We stopped for gas in Oak View, an appropriate name as we were soon to discover that Ojai Valley is so green because of all the California Oak trees which seem to abound there and soon after, the road turned eastwards as we joined Highway 150 in Mira Monte, where we noticed a large mobile-home park, which turns out to be one of four such estates in that town. There’s no doubt that on initial face value mobile homes provide an economic alternative for those, such as ourselves indeed, who cannot always afford a house in our ideal location, but I also have to wonder if they are such a wise investment when one is living at the mercy of whoever owns the land upon which that home is “parked”. I have to admit my negative feelings arise from tales I heard about such communities back in Britain, where unscrupulous landowners were quite ruthless towards their residents, and as a result many parks became quite unpleasant places to live; I think that perhaps I need to do some further research on that type of home ownership here in California, as I do begin to wonder if it could be a solution to our quandary.
Anyway, just a few miles further and we found ourselves in the middle of Ojai and as is our wont, once again we took ourselves on a little orientation tour around the town. The main street had some handsome older buildings including what we discovered later was the old Post Office Tower, a long arcade reminiscent of some we had enjoyed in Bologna during our recent trip to Italy and across the road a tree-filled public park. Traffic was light, street parking was free for a couple of hours, the views of surrounding mountains were delightful and the general atmosphere was relaxing and stress-free, a definite positive after life in the Los Angeles basin. We turned off north into the main residential neighbourhood and criss-crossed back and forth, past many attractive homes but started to wonder if we may have been a bit out of our financial depth – this was mainly after we picked up a For Sale description sheet outside one very fine old house surrounded by a large garden of mature trees that was well over $1m, somewhat similar to prices in our up-market corner of Long Beach. Nevertheless we were starting to feel pretty good about the place, a sense that was further reinforced as we drove across to the other side of the town, in and around Soule Park, a large green space beside the river good for picnics and walking the dog – one of which we don’t actually have at the moment – through one or two other smaller neighborhoods and eventually finding ourselves at Persimmon Hill, a very exclusive estate of large elegant homes, prime horse property and beautiful views across Ojai Valley.
Returning to the main street, East Ojai Avenue, we parked in a shady corner of Westridge Midtown Market IGA’s car park to pick up some groceries (and make use of their ‘facilities’) before walking through the town centre, popping into Libbey Park and briefly watching some musicians rehearsing in Libbey Bowl where the Ojai Annual Music Festival was due to open that evening. Apparently there are plenty of things happening in Ojai during the summer including wine and beer festivals and a Lavender Festival which we hope to visit later in the month. Our post-midday tummy rumblings prompted us to drop into the Ojai Café Emporium for – in my case at least – life-saving scones, quiche and coffee none of which were very wonderful although the service was friendly enough. With the “inner man” suitably sated, we set off to find a realtor, finally meeting the very laid back Ron McCrea, the owner of Ojai Valley Real Estate who seemed decidedly underwhelmed by our price range and took great delight in showing us a map of the December 2017 Thomas fire that encircled the town like a giant horse-shoe and resulted in dense smoke covering the town for several days; very encouraging!
Unperturbed we went and looked at four possible* homes for sale (*that is they were within our price range) that we found in one of the local newspapers, all of which further deflated our enthusiasm for the town as a possible future nesting site. Which is a real shame as the town is in a beautiful setting, has a friendly, relaxed ambience – the local shops even seem to recognise the benefits of an afternoon siesta – has lots of chic artsy studios and boutiques reflecting no doubt the prosperity of many of the residents, and even has one – soon to be two if notices are to be believed – charming little theatre, plus the usual necessary, for Celine at least, offerings of yoga and zumba studios, and for me the potential of having a productive little back garden due to the supposedly very fertile soil to be found throughout the valley.
The afternoon was drawing on by the time we had seen as much as we could for the day, and not wishing to face the Los Angeles evening rush-hour traffic, we headed west instead, taking the old 150 road towards Santa Barbara, a lovely drive as the road winds its way around the edge of Lake Casitas, a man-made lake created in 1959, still somewhat lacking its full water complement in spite of recent rains, and around the edge of Los Padres National Forest, a vast untamed area with plenty of hiking trails and, we understand, lots of wildlife. It was nearly dusk as we arrived in downtown Santa Barbara and checked baggageless into the Holiday Inn Express hotel, an older building fairly typical of much of the city’s traditional architecture, before venturing back out to find a healthy supper in The Natural Café, having very little energy left for much else. The next morning we enjoyed strolling up State St before checking out, as unladen as we had arrived, taking to the road again and spending an interesting couple of hours walking around The Old Mission, the only one of the original thirty plus Californian missions built by the Franciscan order that still has an active community of monks living and working there. This was followed by a short detour among the opulent homes in the Eucalyptus Hill neighbourhood, just confirming for ourselves that we certainly could not afford to live in Santa Barabara, before the very agreeable drive along highway 101 taking us back into that great, overly busy, exceedingly overly populated megalopolis that is Los Angeles, and thence slowly home among the throngs of Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic.
Is Ojai okay? Well it is certainly a delightful small country town which ticks a lot of our boxes, but I fear we may be too late to bag ourselves a bargain. So the search continues, perhaps we’ll head south next time, and try our luck a little closer to the Mexican border . . .
The day we first viewed the place that has now become home – first-, second- or only-home has yet to be decided – it was a fine sunny afternoon. We had breakfasted in our AirBnB digs a couple of hundred yards further up the hill, sharing our mealtime with a young deer feasting in the forest outside the kitchen window, and felt we were in paradise.
The thought of fresh baked Danish pastries for breakfast, mid-morning snack time and afternoon revivers was irresistible; the only serious question was which of the many hostelries was most worthy of our attentions; the other consideration was how many such pauses in our short stay could our stomachs accommodate, without causing unwanted digestive trauma, let alone long-term bodily harm! A three-hour drive demands a reward for the participants and soon after our arrival, too early to check into our room, but armed with a map of The Village of Solvang thoughtfully provided by the hotel receptionist, we strode purposefully the fifty yards towards Copenhagen Drive where we found the promisingly named Danish Mill Bakery. In true Euro-café fashion, the pastries were temptingly displayed in long glass-fronted cabinets yet for some reason we decided to opt for the tastefully presented but rather uninteresting triple open sandwich platter, accompanied unfortunately by very weak filter coffee from a thermos flask due to the failure of their espresso machine. This was altogether an unfortunate mistake as this sixty-one-year-old establishment has good reviews, is comfortable and quaint and we even had a talking mannequin of an old moustachioed Danish pastry chef sitting next to us; I am sure their pastries are every bit as tasty as many to be found in Solvang, but our poor choice of comestibles did kill any inclination to return.
Our travellers’ hunger appeased, we were suitably fortified to continue on our tour of the town, or perhaps village is a more suitable epithet for this compact little community of around six thousand seemingly contented residents. There is a touch of Disneyland about Solvang that is perhaps inevitable in such close proximity to Hollywood, and yet it manages to avoid being tasteless. As well as the multitude of eateries, there are plenty of interesting shops to browse selling everything from recycled clothing to fine art, quite enough to make a slow stroll through the main streets a pleasurable pastime; but we still had a mission which would be satisfied appropriately at the far end of Mission Drive, in Olsen’s Bakery. Whilst the Danish Mill Bakery was, to be honest, a bit of a tourist trap, Olsen’s Bakery was the real McCoy. 
The baked goods looked and smelt totally enticing and before we had even tasted their wares we had placed an order for two loaves of Swedish Limpa bread and an aeblestrudel to be ready for our departure two days later; and after a few minutes drooling over the tempting array of pastries we opted to stop longer and share a Bear Claw and a “cream puff thing”, washed down with a couple of very welcome caffè lattes.
Still heading East, our attention was drawn to three wooden carvings of the Solvang Founding Fathers in the window of a building that started out life a century ago as the Santa Ynez Valley Bank. Renamed The Copenhagen House, this edifice is now home to The House of Amber, a large store that encompasses an impressive display of modern Danish design including everything from an enormous collection of Hoptimists, funny little spring-necked creatures of all colours, shapes and sizes that nod at you mesmerisingly, through to very smart Bering watches and the elegantly sculptured silverware of Georg Jensen; but the most interesting corner of the store is the little Museum of Amber, wherein one can discover the provenance of these beautiful natural gems that started out life millions of years ago as simple blobs of tree resin.
