Chocolate Tour!

I should first mention that the entire bus ride there I was worrying that we would somehow miss the stop or that the bus wasn’t actually going there and we’d be on this continuous loop until we missed all the tours again. Much to my relief we eventually arrived, and with time to spare (since we had left extra early in order to make sure we would make it this time). This meant grabbing some free chocolate and wandering around the store and museum. I really like their store because it’s a brilliant combination of chocolate, Disney, and bears. I think Perugina’s marketing team decided that their target audience was me.

The first part of the tour consisted of walking around their museum area and watching a video about the history and production of the chocolate. We also watched some of their old commercials, which was fun.

Then we were led through a door into this hallway that smelled overwhelmingly of chocolate. It reminded me of coming home and smelling rich brownies baking in the oven. It was amazing. I stood there for a while, no longer hearing the tour guide, and simply sniffing and trying to think of a way to remember that smell. We then walked on farther down the hallway and up three steps of flights until we reached this small door. It led to a walkway with windows all along it. Below we could watch the production lines in the factory. I wanted to stay in there forever, it was fascinating. We kept exclaiming and pointing things out: bacis on a conveyor belt, machines that twisted the ends of candy wrappers, molds that were used and then brought around again, women hand-wrapping Easter eggs, a machine that sorted the candies into separate lines and then into tubes, forklifts carrying boxes and boxes of chocolates, broken pieces of chocolate set aside that we decided we wouldn’t mind taking off their hands, and all that chocolate moving past us. It was really amazing and it was so interesting and exciting to get to see all of that.

Sadly, the walkway eventually ended. We were then shown the biggest chocolate in the world, made up of layered bricks of baci that had been on display during the Perugia Chocolate Festival six years ago, and the replica they now had of it. We looked around a bit more and then went to get some more chocolate. This is when the woman working at the desk made the mistake of leaving her post. We quickly began to shove our pockets full of chocolate, Chris going for a more random selection while I focused on getting all of the dark chocolates and as many Baci as I could. I in no way regret this behavior. She returned and I serenely took one into my now empty hand and walked away. The plates may have been a bit more empty but hey, there were other people there too so who says it was us? Then we went to the bathroom and returned for two more baci before leaving. We were quite giddy because the tour inside the factory had been so awesome and our pockets were full of absolutely delicious chocolate.

The bus came shortly thereafter and we got on, expecting it to be about half an hour. However, we ended up doing a huge loop even deeper into the suburbs of Perugia and then passed the factory again, resulting in a 74 minute bus ride. I couldn’t mind that much though because it was a fantastic day.