Chocolate Overdose

Can you have a chocolate overdose? The answer is yes and we'll explain. Below is a picture at Grand Place, only 5-min from our hotel where our chocolate tour started this morning.

Our friendly little chocolate group started with our guide giving us an overview of Belgium chocolate.  He said we would be visiting several shops starting with the good chocolate and ending with the excellent chocolate.  We then visited a couple of shops and learned about pralines.  

We had a sample in each shop and then went to a little place all set up and waiting for our chocolate lesson.  

We dipped cookies, orange rind and marzipan in chocolate.  Then we made chocolate disks and sprinkled a variety of toppings on them.  

We walked all around town visiting several more shops and also stopping a several points along the way including a small statue of a boy pissing which is very important to the Belgium people.  

In total we stopped at 7 shops and had 10 samples in a variety of flavors.  We passed on a few samples as we were getting close to chocolate overload.  

At the last stop, we picked up the chocolate that we had made and made a bee line to our hotel so we could get it in our room before it was affected by the weather.  

After a rest and a stop for lunch we walked around town some more visiting a cathedral and walking through a large park to the Royal Palace before stopping to buy some Belgium lace and heading back to our hotel to give our poor feet a rest.

Like other countries we've visited, we saw several street actors and this one caught everyone's attention trying to understand how these 3 guys did this.

The hot weather (90 degrees) gave way to thunderstorms in the evening.  This was ok by us since the hotel has a very nice dining room so we went downstairs and enjoyed a soup and salad dinner.

Tomorrow we are off to Bruges.