12th Anniversary Getaway: Hershey, Part 2

 

            I wanted to tell you a little bit more about our trip! When I left you on Friday, I told you about our trip to Hershey Park, but we did spend a little more time in Hershey!

            Our second day in Hershey was a Saturday, and it was probably the most laid-back day of our whole trip. Because we had pushed up some of our plans to the night before, to save on parking fees, we didn’t have much on the schedule. We slept in and went to breakfast there in the hotel before getting ready.

            This was the hotel that smelled so heavily of cleaners, so I told Ryan we were having solvent sausages for breakfast. Ha! Enjoy the sign that hung on the door of the breakfast room. (Cringe.)

            We got ready and made our way into downtown Hershey for the middle of the day. It was cold, but not quite as cold as it had been the day before, and the sun was out, so that helped. I love their Kiss-shaped street lights!

            We started at the Hershey Story Museum, which was a place I’d visited back in 2009. It really hasn’t changed much since I was there then. We ate lunch in Lisa’s Café, and the portions were so big that we saved the rest for dinner. SO good.

            We had planned to try to find the cookie place that was missing from Harrisburg the day before, but as we drove into Hershey, we saw they had one of our favorites: Duck Donuts! We haven’t had a Duck Donut in probably four years, so we decided to scrap the cookie plan entirely and get donuts instead. Three for Ryan and one for me! Every bit as good as I remember. (They really are best warm straight from the store, but we saved ours to eat later.)

            One thing I wanted Ryan to experience was the chocolate tasting. I did this in 2009 with my friend, Amber, and I remembered that sharing it was a good plan, so Ryan and I did the same. It is a little different now than it was when I did it before. Back then, it was part of the café - which apparently also had a different name back then - and now it has its own spot. Back then everyone got a paper placemat with all the descriptions of the chocolates on it (which I still have) and now the placemat is plastic and part of the table.

            The hot chocolate samples were all so good – and I enjoyed them more equally this time than I did before. (I think that’s because I don’t eat as much sweet food – like really, really sweet – as I did back in the day, so even the darker chocolates taste better to me now.) Ryan really enjoyed the tasting, as I hoped he would, and we marked it as a Hershey win.

            There are some paid-admission pieces to this museum, but we elected to skip them this time and instead went back to the hotel to rest. (Well, via Sam’s Club. Because who doesn’t take advantage of bulk shopping while on the road so a special trip isn’t needed later??)

            I took a nap, we ate our leftovers, and that night we watched a movie. 

            I had to laugh because we got all the way to the end of the movie – to the most important part – and it just stopped.

            Turns out we had hit 24 hours of internet usage and needed to log in again. Fortunately it saved our place and let us finish!

            We knew we were going to need to leave early the next morning, so we tried to repack as much as we could that evening.