Finding Waldo & Adventure in Downtown Poulsbo

Exploring Poulsbo today! It’s such a cute little Viking town!

Poulsbo, a small city with a heavy Norway feel, was a place I never knew I would love to visit. While exploring Washington, a friend of mine told me how much she loved downtown Poulsbo and was excited to take us to their local doughnut shop, Sluys. I, being a doughnut connoisseur that I am, of course obliged.

And of course no town exploration is complete without tasting their doughnuts! This one was called a Viking cup with a mountain of cream cheese icing on top!

We drove for what felt like forever until we arrived in an adorable downtown area that was buzzing with visitors. Walking up to the doughnut shop I was taking in all of the beautiful Nordic decor and feel the town had to offer. It was so darn cute! We grabbed a dozen “viking cups” and random other doughnuts for the littles and sat on a bench to enjoy the cool morning air.

After stuffing ourselves silly, we stumbled upon a “Where’s Waldo” search for the kiddos. This is when everything really took off. See the deal was that you had to visit all of the stores on a “map” and find Waldo. Once you found him, you got a signature from an employee and then headed on your way. Once you collected all of the signatures you needed, you were suppose to head back to one of the main bookstores and collect your prize. Well, a prize is all that needed to be stated for our 6 kids to get into a frenzy of excitement so off we went.
Let me just say, this was a fantastic strategy to get guests into the doors of the shops. We searched high and low in 23-25 stores to find Waldo and us adults bought coffee, candles, paint, stickers, hats, etc. in a variety of stores that we may not have walked into without our kids playing the game. It was absolutely great!
Once we rounded up all of the signatures the kids were able to redeem their search sheet for Waldo buttons that they were very proud to have. We also decided to head back to one of the Italian restaurants to chow down on lunch as well because the food smelled amazing while hunting for Waldo earlier.

Spaghetti bolognese time! #Noms

Downtown Poulsbo was such a blast to explore and offered a huge variety of shops for such a small area. It will now be a mandatory stop every time I visit Washington so that I can soak up some more Viking-esque sights and products. Not to mention I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on another Viking Cup!