Today I headed to Perugia to go see the Chocolate Festival that I have heard so much about. I went with a group of 5 girls (Allison, Dede, Morgan, Charlotte, and Sarah) at like 5:45 in the morning and we took a bus to Florence and then got on the two-hour train to Perugia. We had a pretty good time chatting and sleeping on the train and we arrived in no time. Once in Perugia we bustled around the train station figuring out how to get to the festival. As we were wandering I ran into Ali Basset and Gianna Wright from JSHS! Ali is studying in Florence and Gianna in Rome, and of course I ran into them in a completely unrelated third-party city that none of us were studying in. I said hey pretty briefly as we were all busy getting tickets and making plans.
Once we bought our bus tickets we hopped on a bus that took us up hill to what seemed to be the top of a big hill in the middle of the city where the festival was held. We had some really cool views going up and even more once we were at the top.
Unfortunately the weather was a bit chilly and in my 5am haze I had neglected to bring a jacket so I was forced to endure a rather windy chilly day with naught but my long sleeved t-shirt and jeans. The sun was acceptable, but we all struggled in the shade. We got in line and bought our Choco-cards for 6€ (fun fact: I have learned to do the Euro sign on the computer Shift +Opt + 3) which gave us free samples and things at many of the booths around the festival.
So with our cards in hand we proceeded around the streets and squares lined with stands full of all kinds of chocolate. There was hot chocolate, chocolate bars, chocolate cakes, chocolate covered fruit, chocolate pasta (yes, you read correctly), and every other chocolaty thing imaginable. They also had things like chocolate playing cards and a tool set made of chocolate and coated with chocolate powder to make them look like rusty metal tools. There were tiny chocolates, giant chocolates, white chocolate, dark chocolates, every chocolate! They had chocolate in a box, they had chocolate with a fox, they had chocolate here and there, they had chocolate everywhere! You get the idea. *Note: sadly they did not have chocolate with a fox.
There was also a bunch of chocolate merchandise like fondue pots, molds and then things like clothes and cups. We had a really nice time shopping around at the various stands. We also ended up taking about 1000 jumping pictures undoubtedly due to our mutual sugar highs. Eventually we stopped for a salty and savory lunch to counter our super-sugar-saturated palates and then proceeded to wrap up the day.
Before we left however we were seen dancing to some catch music by a Ciobar stand. Ciobar is basically a hot chocolate that is more like melted chocolate it is so thick. Next to the stand they were filming people dancing and singing along to a song to use in a commercial or advertising campaign. When the people saw us they asked us to come down and we signed some releases so they could film us. Then they let us all choose silly hats and instruments to jam with. I had a white fedora and a microphone. We ended up singing along and dancing with the song they played like 12 times. I was kinda like a lead singer person and went around lip-syncing to the song they played while dancing with everyone else. They kept yelling out instructions from behind the camera and then telling me to do things like turn a girl and cover the camera with my hat. Then after filming us with different angles for a while we put down the instruments and they arranged us so that the girls were all standing together in a semicircle and I was several feet in front of them. They had me stand in a really wide straddle so that I was shorter and the camera angle would work. Then we all took bites of their hot chocolate when they said a given number and smiled. It was a really fun end to the day and had us all really excited and laughing.
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