Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate

This past Saturday, we went with our dear friends, the Brodricks, to Cadbury World. Yes folks, the Cadbury Factory is a short 2 hour drive from our house. How can we be so lucky, you may be asking. All I can say is that I must have done something right in the pre-existence. For all of you chocolate lovers out there, be jealous. I've eaten more chocolate in the last week than I think I've eaten in my whole life. And this is not just any kind of chocolate. It's not the waxy yucky stuff that is made in the States (sorry if you're a Hershey's fanatic). This is European chocolate. There are some things done here that we just haven't gotten quite right in the States. Chocolate happens to be one of them. This is my cute family at the factory. Kimball was being picture shy and hiding behind our legs. What a cooperative boy!

Cadbury World is not just a place where you can go and watch chocolate being made, in fact we hardly saw any of that. We first started at a small room that showed hollogram images telling some of the history of the men who came up with Cadbury. Before these men, chocolate was made with powdered milk and these men had the idea to use fresh milk. Their main milk chocolate bar is called Dairy Milk Chocolate.

The picture above shows what we got to do after the little show. We went into this room and got to choose whichever candy we wanted (as shown on the wall in the background). They put that in a cup. Then they had little machines that just poured warm milk chocolate right on top of our candy. I asked if I could order one of those machines for my house, but darn it, they were all out! Let's just say, it was divine! Clark had chocolate covered licorice (which isn't really like our licorice), Kimball had chocolate covered gummies, Sammy just had gummies (party pooper), and I had chocolate covered shortbread, yummm! Personally, I thought mine was the best.

We then took the tour of the factory, which like I said wasn't just a factory. It was almost like a little museum where we learned the history of chocolate. How it's made, yada, yada, yada! We even got to go on a small ride.

Above is a picture of us getting to play with chocolate. Hasn't everyone wanted to play with chocolate at some time in their life? Unfortunately they said no eating the chocolate, only playing. Which is a shame, because I was about to put my head right underneath that spatula and let the chocolate drizzle down into my throat. Oh well, I'll have to try it at home later.

Towards the end of the tour they had a small area where you could stand in front of a big white screen with a tiny camera. It took your picture then filled your image up with imaginary chocolate. So it basically made a little chocolate sculpture out of your picture. Then they displayed the chocolate image on a screen for all to see. Above is our chocolate sculpture. If you look close enough you can see Clark on the left, me holding Addi in the Bjorn on the right, and Kimball down towards the bottom. For some reason, Chocolate Sammy blended right in with Clark's chocolate legs.

The little museum ended with the Cadbury store, where I've never seen so much chocolate in my life. Behind us in this picture are the mini eggs (one of my favorites back home). We had so much fun at the store. Each of the boys got a treat. Kimball got a Double Decker (I'm still not sure what it is, but he likes it). Sammy got a chocolate hollow bird, only because he stuck his thumb right through the face and broke it, so we had to buy it. Clark and I, of course, got lots of treats. They had a marked down section. We got a bag of mis-shaped chocolates. We got some Fingers (chocolate shortbread sticks), and we got a bunch of free stuff from the museum: regular Dairy Milk bars, and Chocolate Caramel bars (my favorite). It's really hard to control yourself in a place like that. But we walked out only 15 pounds poorer than we were, besides the 36 pounds we paid for the family to get in.

At the store they had this chocolate bar that weighed more than Addilyn. 5 Kilos, which is 11 pounds. You better believe that if I didn't have a 50 pound weight limit on my luggage to come home, I'd have that bar in my possession right now.

Cadbury World: one of our funnest trips here in England. Thanks Zac and Vannessa for filling us in on the chocolate love.