Wednesday, November 6, 2013

The Chocolate Museum: Bruges, Belgium

We're continuing the museum theme for the next couple of posts.

The school schedule in Luxembourg is different from most of the U.S. in that there are only two months of summer holidays, but more frequent/longer breaks during the school year.   During this, our second year in Luxembourg, we are attempting to "do something" during these breaks.  (Remember, we are lazy cheapskates).  Like everyone in Luxembourg, Pete is entitled to five weeks of vacation, so we are doing our best to line up his with the kids'.

At fall half-term break, we spent three nights in Bruges, Belgium.  As Belgian chocolate is known the world-over, it was no surprise to find a chocolate museum in the well-known, Flemish city of Bruges.  And since we decided as a family to skip celebrating Halloween this year (gasp!--but much easier to get away with in Europe than the States), it was fitting that we still did something chocolaty on the 31st in mini-homage to our American-ness.

Choco-Story Museum
Meet Choclala, our cocoa bean guide, and his buddy the Cocoa Fairy.  Our theory is she's the tooth fairy's arch nemesis.  And Choclala looks an awful lot like a brown tooth...
sticker-matching game to keep up the motivation
several playmobil dioramas helped tell the history of chocolate
cocoa pods are big!
explaining the components of different types of chocolate.  45% SUGAR!  Yikes!
Chocolate was mainly just a drink for 100s of years.  The froth was a big deal, and these special sticks were rubbed between the hands to create the foam 
How chocolate got to France

molds for solids
"Oh, goodness, I've had enough" -manniquin lady
mixer
tasty art
Praline-making demo, with samples.
Prize for completing sticker hunt.  Noooo...not our buddy Choclala!  Crunch!
Choco-Story: a kid-friendly museum, with chocolate samples, in English.  What more can you ask for?

3 comments:

Chamisa said...

Looks like y'all had a great time there! We skipped it since I think it was rather expensive (cheapskates unite!) and we decided to spend our money sampling chocolates from different shops.

Pete and Rosie said...

That's funny because we did the reverse and didn't end up going to any chocolate shops!! We did the combo ticket with the frite museum.

LS said...

Hi! Love your blog! My family (from Seattle) is seriously looking into moving over, in a very similar situation. Could you possibly contact me? leshinn AT gmail.com. Thank you!