MMMMM!!!!!!!

Saturday we ported in Belgium, the capital of chocolate. :D Zeebrugge is just the dock, so you have to take a shuttle out to Brugges or Brussels. I was a tour guide for Brugges sightseeing and chocolate tour! It was really busy in the city because they were having their yearly fair, so there was a ton of carnival rides set up in the squares. It was different to see a fair in the middle of town rather than a theme park. Most of Belgium speaks French and they are famous for their lace, beer, waffles and of course, my favorite, CHOCOLATE!!!!

Our first stop was the market square. Every year there is a procession of the Holy Blood. When the French owned Belgium, punishment and death by guillotine happened in the square. I can’t believe executions drew such large crowds, I can’t even watch it in movies and that’s fake!
The Belfry Tower and Town Hall also stood in this marketplace.

We walked on to the chocolate museum. Inside, they had displays of several statues, including a life-size Obama made completely out of chocolate. They gathered us into a room, where we watched a chocolate demonstration and learned all about chocolate. The chocolate-ier told us Belgium chocolate usually has a filling inside.

Cocoa beans grow in countries near the equator. The fruit grows, not on trees, and the beans are inside. Once you break open the fruit, you dry the beans so that the white coloring on top disappears. Although the beans smell sweet of chocolate, they are bad for the stomach to eat straight out of the fruit. Experts who collect the beans smell them to determine their quality before shipping to the buyers.

Once you have the beans, you can either crush and roast or roast before crushing them. We saw the pure cocoa pieces, or Nibs, that are bitter because they haven’t been mixed with sugar yet. Sometimes, Nibs are used for a filling to make the chocolate crunchy. They are healthier than adding any type of biscuit. From Nibs, you can make chocolate paste, or cocoa butter. This is the start for every chocolate, even white.

When you add heat, you can extract the cocoa butter to make cocoa powder. White chocolate is made without cocoa paste, so some consider it “not real” chocolate. Different places in Europe make different types of chocolate. Belgium sells the sweeter chocolate. Scandinavian areas prefer milk chocolate, and places like France, Italy and Spain produce dark for a more bitter taste. Europe has a new law allowing 5% of the cocoa butter to be replaced with other fats, such as palm oil. Upper Europe, like Belgium, doesn’t replace so their chocolate melts on the tongue. But the chocolate that contains something else, it will leave a thin layer of fat when the chocolate is gone. That explains why Belgium chocolate is perfect and the leader in the industry!

Although there are only three types of chocolate: milk, dark and white, there are a variety of flavors that can be made from each. It depends on the cocoa beans. Generic chocolate, such as Nestle or Hershey’s, are mixed cocoa beans from all over to get that one specific taste. But if the beans used come from only one place, it’s called an origin chocolate. We got to taste the difference between normal dark chocolate, and an origin chocolate made from the beans of Peru. The Peru chocolate had a special tang to it, unique from any other chocolate I’ve had.

He showed us how they make the shapes of the chocolates they sell. It’s important to start off with the right temperature of everything. The heat has to be specific to cook the crystals properly. White should be in 29 to 30 degrees, milk at 20 to 21 degrees and dark 31 to 32. The mold needs to be room temperature. He used a machine that vibrates the mold while it pours the chocolate into the shapes. The vibration rids the chocolate of the air bubbles, a way you can tell the quality of candies sold in stores. If there are tiny holes in the chocolate, it isn’t made properly.

We watched the chocolate harden in the mold and then he put it in the fridge to cool at 20-25 degrees. Chocolate shrinks 10 degrees so it will pop out of the mold when it’s done. After a few minutes, you can put a filling in. The most popular filling in Belgium is made with roasted nuts, caramel and milk chocolate. After it has cooled in the oven, you put another layer of chocolate on the top to seal it. If it’s a good mold, it will have a shine.

He also showed us the process of making the Easter eggs. Using an egg mold, you make two halves of the egg. You heat a marble or metal slab and melt a little of each half to glue it together. We tasted samples of this delicious chocolate that had a thin layer of strawberry in the crust and an amazing cream filling. Simply divine. In the gift shop, I purchased a bag of milk chocolate made of cocoa beans from Venezuela.

Belgium is full of sweet streets. I can’t live here, I would become SO FAT! I walked along, taking in the aroma and longing for it all. But, bikes are common here, so I guess that’s how they burn off all the food!

I talked for most of the tour with this adorable old man from Brazil. He told me about how he sent his daughter to London to learn English. She was invited to attend the American Academy in New York and study acting. Unfortunately, because of her British accent, she wasn’t invited back for a second year at the school, so she now lives in Brazil with her British husband she met in London. It is a pretty crazy story, all over the map. But I love it, so romantic! I am so thankful I live in this era, when we can actually meet amazing people from around the world and stay in touch with them. I always imagine how hard it must have been to write letters and wait months for news. It’s beautiful we can keep relationships thriving now; it makes the world seem smaller and brings us closer.

Continuing our tour, we saw the Church of Our Lady, where Michelangelo sculpted the famous statue of Madonna. There was a statue in front of the church with a man and woman dancing. It was erected here to remind young ones in love to stop and think before they enter the chapel. I found the frog, the signature of the artist. When we were given free time, I looked around in a few of the shops, looking at the homemade lace work and the dolls. I also bought a waffle topped with chocolate and powdered sugar. UGH IT WAS AMAZING!!!!! I think FOR SURE I will get a waffle each time we are in Belgium. That way I can compare Brugges waffles to the ones in Brussels, and I can crown the champion.