Virtual Vacation: Chocolate Lunch

Chocolate is lunch, right? :)

We thought so.

This was the Hershey Bake Shoppe, which had some absolutely sinful treats.

Such as....

...or even worse....

We opted to do fondue. There was a chocolate fountain with an eternal source of rich fondue...and the nice lady behind the counter made these for us. Cups of fondue, brownie, chocolate chips, whipped cream, more chocolate chips, and as if that wasn't enough...a sliver of Hershey bar.

Oh yeah.

Amber went for dark chocolate (antioxidants, you know) and I opted for milk chocolate (dairy, you know).

Couldn't possibly be happier.

Guess who won???

Not me.

Virtual Vacation: The Bake Shoppe Store

After we finished our little riding tour, we hit the Bake Shoppe store. This had several activities you could do, but we'd already caught glimpses of the gift shop (see post below) and were into saving money. But just to give you an idea...you could have your picture taken and put on a candy bar wrapper. You could get an ID and become a factory worker for a minute. And you could personalize the little tissue paper that sticks out of a Hershey kiss.

Instead, we took pictures. :) This is just a view of the front of the store...


Upstairs was the Kit Kat Cafe, where you could get hot dogs, sandwiches, and blizzard-like treats. There were several tables and chairs up there - including this one hidden behind the Reese's sign and curtain.

This was the view from the table where we sat while we ate our fondue. These panels rotated. One side was painted like four Hershey bars side by side. This other side showed glimpses of their different candy logos.

I wanted to try this but I thought you had to pay to do it. You could turn the wheel (like the girl in the pink shorts at the bottom of the picture) and kisses would come down the chute to fill a bag. Pretty cool!

Where is Bekah?? Oh there she is! Right by the chocolate.

Amber with the world's largest Hershey bar. I didn't even look at how many fat grams were in that one!

Virtual Vacation: Shopping at Chocolate World

The last thing we did before coming home was shop in the massive string of gift shops in Chocolate World. It was especially perilous since all the field trip kids were turned loose in the shopping arena...but we managed.

I wanted to get gifts that seemed at least a bit unique, so I stopped at this custom molded chocolates store.
Got this for Olivia, who took care of my house, my plants, and Kaegan & Braeya while I was gone.

Got this one for my parents. My Dad has declared it doesn't appeal to him and my Mom has decided it's too cute to eat. I should have purchased cereal bowls. LOL. (They did like it, I promise!)

Now THIS is the kind of clock I need in my house! This was in the main area of Chocolate World.

I'm thankful I'm not a Barbie collector, because I would have had to purchase the Hershey Barbie (complete with kiss shaped earrings) - which cost $50. I put that money toward scrapping supplies, thankyouverymuch.

Goodbye, sweet Chocolate World!! Thank you for letting us visit and for making my first vacation so much fun!!!

Amber's fond farewell to Chocolate World.

After we left, we stopped at a scrapbook store in the outlet mall just about a mile away. I'd read online that they had some products specifically for Hershey, so I thought I should load up while I was in the vicinity!

Virtual Vacation: Chocolate Lab

I promised Christina some chocolate, so here goes!

After we spent the morning at the Botanical Gardens (those posts are below), we ate lunch and got majorly lost trying to navigate the town.

We found the Hershey Story museum, which offered a variety of fun things. There are two more posts below about this stop on the trip.

The first thing we did was participate in the Chocolate Lab. Not a dog. An actual lab with actual chocolate.

The first part was kind of like school. We listened to a lady talk to us about the history of cacao and the origin of chocolate. Here I am with a cacao pod. (I think. I was actually far more caught up in the pictures than the listening. Such a bad student.)

After that, we learned about the "nibs" which are inside the pod, and we took turns grinding them with this little granite pestle thing. At this point, I began thanking God for candy bars. This was all a lot of effort for, as the instructor said, "a mediocre chocolate drink." At least she was honest!

Please know how much pride I have swallowed to post the hairnet pictures. NOT my best look. The lady in the background was kind of a Where's Waldo-ette of our trip. We saw her at the gardens...we saw her here...and she was even staying in our hotel! She was nice, but it was funny to keep seeing her everywhere. In this picture I'm grating a piece of chocolate. And part of my glove. But don't tell.

We put the grated chocolate in warm water and did this whisking thing until it dissolved. Then we could add honey, cinnamon, corn meal (!?!) and red pepper flakes (!??!?!??!?) if we wanted to alter the taste and consistency of our drink.

No words. What a dumb picture. LOL.

Amber's empty cup, and her "parting gift" - a chocolate cacao pod.

I'm glad we did the lab - it was not a long activity, but it was fun and different. And I managed to learn just a thing or two...like I look horrible in a hairnet...and chocolate has come a LONG way.

Virtual Vacation: The Hershey Story

The actual "museum" part of the Hershey Story building was upstairs. Julie Crandall, if you're reading this, I have to tell you that I thought of you while we were in the museum. I remembered the conversation we had about all the kids' toys that "do something" - and how kids have lost the ability to be creative on their own. I regret to inform you that I was kind of bored with the plain old standard museum exhibits, and I was totally excited about the interactive stuff. WOOPS!

In addition to the standard memorabilia that one would expect to see in a museum, they also offered these very cool things:

You could design your own candy bar wrapper and then e-mail it to yourself! This was one of my better wrappers (I did five). My Christmas one was pathetic. When you print them out, they are actually large enough to cover a large Hershey bar - so you really can use them if you want!

Amber, being an art major, was much better at designing her wrappers. As I recall, though, this was one of the funnier ones.




Another cool interactive thing we did was the Hershey newspaper. You could select a headline, select a background, enter your name, and then pose for a picture (similar to the little photo booths in a mall) and then it would superimpose you into the picture and write your name into a story. You could email that to yourself too. Ours were hysterical. We decided to be in them together, but the name line wasn't long enough to handle both our names, so we had to become "Bek and Ber." In one of the pictures, we carefully picked out Mr. Hershey riding a camel in Egypt, but with both of us in the picture, we completely covered him up. So there was this whole caption about "Bek and Ber with Mr. Hershey" - but he was missing. We were tired and ridiculously goofy by that time, so we found it pretty funny.

Around the wall of one part of the museum was this timeline. The bottom (orange) part gave facts about world/national events, and the top part gave information about products introduced/changed/retired/whatever in Hershey world. This picture is from our birth years. I was born in the year of Rolos, Reese's Pieces, and Whatchamacalits.

Virtual Vacation: Chocolate Tasting

At this point, we'd not really indulged in chocolate, and it felt wrong. After all, we'd been in Hershey almost 24 hours! Cafe Zooka, which was part of the Hershey Museum complex, offered a chocolate tasting experience (for a nominal fee, of course). All we knew is that we'd be drinking warm chocolate.


Here was the setup of the tasting. We received little glasses filled with chocolate from different places, each with a different percentage of pure cacao. The little boxes gave us information about the location...and also told us the percentage of cacao.

Interesting thing about this - it wasn't like drinking hot chocolate, as I thought it would be. This was thick - like drinking a melted chocolate bar. Amber called it chocolate sludge, and that was a really good description. I had to drink water after every sip. And some of the bitter ones, I couldn't even finish.

Amber with her chocolate sludge.

This ended up serving as our dinner. LOL. After the gardens and before we got lost, we had an enormous lunch at Red Robin. Neither of us were particularly hungry, so we just let this be our dinner - and then we ate some snacks in the hotel later.

Virtual Vacation: Hershey Sights

We left the museum right before it closed for the day, and according to what we'd read in brochures and online, most other things would be closing up shop too, so we decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel. Before we went, though, we snapped a few pictures of the streets of Hershey.

This is the Hershey museum, which is apparently a fairly new or updated version. We nearly never found it, but once we did, we weren't sure how we missed it. Must be the same way we got lost in Indiana. LOL.
Took this picture waiting for a green light. This is just a sign in front of the museum.

Cafe Zooka - where we enjoyed the chocolate tasting. :)

We didn't hit the theme park (I'm not good with rapidly moving rides) but we did see this ride that looked fun. The ring rotated around as it went (slowly) up and down. I think it would have been a fun way to see over Hershey!

And it's true - they really do have kiss shaped street lights. I'd heard you were also supposed to be able to smell chocolate in the streets - but I didn't. I'm not sure if I missed it or if it's not there anymore. I did smell it in the lobby of our hotel, though. Nice touch!

So there's our brief tour-o-town!

Virtual Vacation: Botanical Gardens

There are four posts below (I would apologize, but it's my blog and I'm really not sorry) that cover our trip to Hershey Gardens. I saw this listed in a Triple A book and thought it looked like a fun place to go. I'd never before been to a botanical garden, so I was absolutely fascinated. I don't know how this one stacks up to other gardens around the country, but I have to say I was impressed with the variety and the beauty of the place!

Just to give you an idea...the site says the gardens cover 23 acres, and here are the types of areas they offered: a rose garden, an Italian rose garden, the children's garden, the butterfly house, the oak grove, a Japanese garden, ornamental grasses, an arboretum, a conifer collection, another rose garden, an herb garden, a perennial garden, a memorial garden, the square and fan gardens, and a garden dedicated to a former director of the Hershey Gardens.

We spent over two hours in the Gardens and loved every minute of it.

Here is one of the best "overall" views we got - and this still probably only covered an itty bitty part of it. We didn't have the greatest weather day, but it didn't matter.

I am going to make a sign like this...

...for when my yard looks like this. :)

Amber took this picture and it just cracked me up. No, this bird was not responsible for the mess under it, but it sure looks like it, doesn't it? :) I think in my scrapbook, I'll caption this, "Some days are just like this."

They had many weeping trees (you'll see a whole post on one of them below) but this was one of the more unusual ones.

If you've read my blog for very long, you know I l-o-v-e roses. To be in a garden with three whole areas designated for roses...well, I was in heaven.

Hey Skyepuppy - are you proud(ish) of this one? I remembered to do an angle shot with my camera. This was back in the tree part of the garden, and it was absolutely tranquil back there. I loved it...could have stayed for hours more!

I was pretty proud of this picture, too. There were a number of ponds and fountains around the garden.

I'm normally not a big fan of sculpture, but this one was good. I think I liked the incorporation of color. I don't recall seeing color on a sculpture like this before.

The only kind of bluegrass I can stand. :)

Amber..."attacked" by one of the weeping trees.

We took this picture for Amber's mom, who loves yellow roses.

The only two disappointing things were the lack of activity in the butterfly garden (more on that in a post below) and the non-existence of Swan Lake. This is the lake, which the sign says they drain a few times a year for cleaning and such. This was one of those times. We took a picture anyway...just imagine your own swans, I guess. In the background, up on the hill, was a hotel where we did NOT stay. It was one of the uber-expensive ones.

Below are more posts about specific parts of the garden. I promise promise promise the next posting session will be about chocolate!!