Mmmm...cioccolate....

A bunch of us (me, Nicole, Joe, Angie) went to Saschall (a theater about 25 minute bus ride from SACI) to go to the CHOCOLATE FAIR!!!!!

It was divinely delicious...not that I really needed to say that. Basically the venue was circular so you walk in with your entrance ticket and 6 free sample tickets (4 chocolate, 1 tea, 1 coffee) and you're surrounded by tables and tables of chocolatey goodness. Then there's upstairs where there was a meat selection, teas (I tried coconut and pinapple tea...it was surprisingly tasty! I wanted to buy a box but it was around 8 Euros for 12 teabags...so I passed). In the beginning we all just use a ticket or two and ate the samples but then we started sharing so that was fun. The hazelnut stuff was my favorite along with the little plastic cups of hot chocolate (literally) - just warm thickish liquid chocolate. The oddest one we tried was the one that had tabasco or hotsauce in it...it was weird, I dont think I'd buy any but a nibble of it was enough...it packed quite the huge punch!

I didn't think of taking my camera but Angie took some pictures so I can get them from her at some point! We saw this chocolate dragon, whose head was about the size of a basketball and the body about a meter long with scales and spikes and claws and teeth - it was pretty amazing.

They had a demo of how to make chocolate - chocolate cubes with filling. So there was a chocolate chef with his tools and melted chocolate and a camera zoomed in on what he did and it displayed it on the stage wall. Unfortunately it was in Italian so we didnt understand it but was fun watching for a while.

Joe was accidentaly given 2 sets of sample tickets so we shared the second set between the 4 of us so we all got a few more samples each!

I acutally bought one piece of chocolate cause it wasn't part of the samples so I just paid the 70 cents for it. It was a little disc of dark chocolate, honey and almond pieces. Mmmm...yummy.

Joe and I also bought a loaf of 5-grain bread made in a wood fired oven and made fresh that day for the fair (like the random meat stall, there was a bread stall). They had a bunch of free samples (didn't need a ticket) so we tried it all! They had really good chocolate bread and plum cake. And obviously the 5-grain was amazing cause otherwise we wouldn't have bought it.

Two of Joe's flatmates showed up so the 6 of us left together to head back towards home. Then Joe, Nicole and I went and got pizza and becuase we're students, we get a free first glass of wine (or only glass cause we didn't want to order any cause its expensive!! hehe). Walked around for a bit after dinner and headed back to our flat and then decided to go to Stonehenge, a little family-run bar across the street. We went in and it was nice, low key, not swarming with tourists or anything. Robert came at some point and the four of us played foozball for a bit. Then all went our separate ways! (Robert/Rob is a returning student at SACI, he was here last semester, and now he also works one night a week at Stonehenge cause he went there so much last semester!)

Tomorrow my Digital Multimedia class and a few other classes are taking a bus from Piazza Adua near the train station to go to Bologna to the Bologna Art Festival. Apparently it's a big deal and lots of galleries from around Italy come there to display and have a mini gallery at the fair. Renting space costs approximately 30,000 Euros!! So we will spend the day there, look at art (mostly contemporary from what I've heard), and head back to Firenze around 6pm. Bologna and Firenze are about an hour or so apart by bus.

More later!!!