Valborg - the Swedish Celebration of Spring

I was all excited to celebrate Valborg. The name sounds like some strange species on Star Trek or something, but I found an announcement in the paper stating anyone with Swedish ancestry or anyone interested in Swedish celebrations was welcome to come to Valborg to celebrate and welcome spring. I sure wanted to welcome spring, and remind winter to stay well away! I don't think many people interested in Swedish celebrations found the little memo that I had :)

I did convince Katie that it would be a fun opportunity to celebrate spring Swedish style. After all, she did have ancestors from Sweden, or was it Denmark, or Norway? About the same, isn't it? :) We had to call her father to confirm, whatever it was, it wasn't Sweden. Oh well, we fit the bill for interested in Swedish celebrations.

When we got to the celebration, there were quite a few older people sitting around, some talking in Swedish and others in English with a definite accent of some sort. I'm guessing Swedish, but I could be wrong. We wandered around for just a bit, noticing the charge for hotdogs, $3!, the firepit with some families gathered about it and the treat table with chocolates and goodies. Being a bit hungry for much more than a $3 hotdog, we decided to go grab a bite to eat and come back afterward. Hopefully we could return with some cash to grab some of that chocolate!

Katie remembered someone telling her about a great Itatlian place somewhere near The King's English, a small book store she had been to and loved. She thought she remembered where it was a couple of blocks away. . . we had a nice 20-30 minute drive through the sugarhouse area, taking in all the fun, little and not so little, beautiful, older homes. It looked like a great place to buy a cute, little home, althought I doubt the prices are little or cute . . .

We finally found the adorable section of small storefronts that includes the King's English on 15th and 15th. It was a picturesque, quaint little area. We walked around a bit, taking it in. I loved it! I couldn't wait to go into the book store, but stomachs were calling, and we had to fill our bellies first. We chose a small restaurant of middle eastern cuisine. Trying a bit of everything, we had sweet humus with delicious pita bread, a lamb filled pita sandwich, and potatoes with chicken that reminded me of Thailand. I was loving every minute and enthralled with the quaintness of it all!


Next time, was a phrase we used often during the course of the night. . . next time we'd try out the little Italian restaurant pictured, next time we would spend more time in the King's English, next time we would order the regular, non sweet humus, next time we would try some of the other foods on the menu, next time we would dress up like pigs too so that people could come out of the restaurants to stare at our retreating figures and wonder what on earth we were up to . . . okay so we didn't say we wanted to do that next time, but it did happen, strange . . . anyway, I sure hope next time comes soon!


Katie spotted this little delight. A dog post. Next time, she wants to bring her dog Izzy too.


After dinner we made it to the King's English, sadly with only about 10 minutes to peruse before it closed at 9. Needless to say I didn't get near enough time to look around. I love bookstores! I especially loved the small home town feel of this one! It reminded me of the bookstore in You've Got Mail. I love books, and I can't wait to go back to this bookstore, next time!

Sadly we exited the King's English and made our way back to the Swedish celebration. As we drove up to the park site, the celebrations were gone. Empty. No one was there. So much for the Swedish celebration.

We celebrated spring this year in our own way.