Jaunted's Amanda Kendle just got back from Melbourne. This week: Read all about it.
Melbourne might have great cakes, but it's got even better chocolate. With half a dozen excellent chocolatiers across the city center, it's hard to choose but once you've tried the chocolate mousse at Koko Black you'll be completely converted.
Koko has several locations across Melbourne and a store in Canberra now, too, but the sweetest shop is in the Royal Arcade off Bourke Street.
Head upstairs and order a sit-down chocolate meal with a smooth and steamy hot chocolate, or just buy up a selection of incredible truffles and other assorted chocolates at the front counter on the ground floor. Or do both.
We admit we don't know everything about every destination in the whole world, but we sure are surprised that we hadn't heard of the Chocolate Hills until now. They're found in Bohol in the Philippines and have hit the headlines because they're in the running to be one of the new Natural Wonders of the World.
But before you book your ticket, don't get too excited: They're not actually hills made of chocolate, as we'd hoped. Instead they are a weird set of over 1,200 cone-shaped hills, all of a similar size, and because the green grass that covers them turns brown during the dry season, they were named the Chocolate Hills.
Two of the chocolate hills have resorts on them, and at one there's a special viewing station which is part of the Chocolate Hills Complex. They've also got a hostel, swimming pool and a restaurant: Here's hoping their menu features lots of chocolate.
Don't count on Sweet Walks' Luxury Chocolate Tour to help you burn off those Valentine's Day-related calories. This isn't one of those walking tours that involves long, punishing distances, though you might break a sweat being chased by perfume hawkers at Saks Fifth Avenue on a Saturday. But if you like chocolate and want to know where to find the really fancy, top-of-the-line goods, the Luxury Chocolate Tour is a splendid method of whiling away a Friday or Saturday afternoon in NYC.
Our fun and knowledgeable guide took us to five different European chocolate shops on the Upper East Side in two and a half hours. At each place we sampled chocolates (included in the price!) and learned about the history of the store and the process of chocolate making. These stores are so exclusive and relatively unknown that, as our guide said, 80 percent of tour-goers are locals. (Can't say that about those double-decker buses.)
Our favorites? The buttery-caramel centers of the Rigoletto chocolate at La Maison du Chocolat (30 Rockefeller Center) and the spicy hot cocoa and adorable cocoa-butter-painted chocolates at MarieBelle (762 Madison Avenue).
Our parents always threatened to send us away to Timbuktu when we were naughty as youngsters, so it took us a long time to accept this African town as a genuine tourism destination. But we're still not sure if we can believe that two British men recently drove from England to Timbuktu in a truck powered by chocolate.
Yet apparently it's true. Two Brits in their 30s recently drove the 2,600 mile trip to Mali in a Ford truck and a Land Cruiser, vehicles which they would then donate to a charity in Africa. They used a special form of biodiesel that was made from waste chocolate.
Waste chocolate? We thought all chocolate was good, but if it can be used to power cars, it's probably not what we want to eat. The two crazy Brits who made the chocolate-powered Timbuktu trip calculated they saved 15 tons of carbon emissions, and they've set themselves a new challenge: flying to China in an airplane fueled by garbage. When are these intrepid travelers going to get a real job?
Wow, we nearly missed this one, but just in time we can tell you about the Chocolate Rush in Bendigo, south-eastern Australia. The rush isn't meant to make it sound drug-related; it's a play on gold rush, since that's how the town of Bendigo came to be famous.
Anyways, the Chocolate Rush is on this weekend (August 4 and 5) and it sounds pretty high-brow: it aims to "educate, indulge and challenge your palate". There are workshops on making chocolatey desserts or handmade pralines, demonstrations by renowned chocolate masters and, of course, tons and tons of chocolate to try and buy. The grand finale is the Australian Chocolate Championships. We wanna marry the champion!
So you're traveling through Belgium and you suddenly think: Duh! Belgian chocolate! Gotta get some! If you've been ignorant enough to land in Brussels or Antwerp without a chocolate strategy, then we have some tips for you, courtesy of Budget Travel. Recommended shops include Burie in Antwerp, Mary in Brussels and the Leonidas chain across the country.
The biggest tip of all is good news: you really can't go wrong anywhere. Belgium has strict control on its chocolate production process so you nearly always get something tasty. Don't try to bargain with a chocolatier, as prices are set either by piece or by weight. And if you want to taste test first, the tip is to try a smaller mom-and-pop store rather than a big chain.
If you have enough willpower to have leftovers you want to take home, be warned that high quality chocolate often should be eaten within two weeks (it might contain fresh cream) and kept in your carry-on. If you can resist it.
Chocaholics visiting Western Australia have two great options to add to their waistlines, with the award-winning Margaret River Chocolate Factory having two outlets now. There's their large factory in Margaret River itself (great wine country!) and a café and outlet in Perth's Swan Valley wine region. At both spots you can buy their products or just spend hours haunting the tasting bowls, where you can endlessly scoop up your choice of white, milk or dark chocolate buds for free.
But just skim-reading the list of chocolate products on their website makes us swoon: from Almond Seashells to Cookie Cream Delight and a Strawberry Cream in white chocolate ... the calories are piling on over the net. But if you're actually there and traveling, you'll be so active that you'' be able to afford a few indulgences. Or if you're too worried about putting that chocolate on the inside, snap up some of their chocolate massage oil instead and get the good choc vibes on the outside.
Big apologies are due to all chocaholic readers: we failed to tell you about an amazing experience you could have had in London this week. The Thorntons chocolatier set up a tasty publicity stunt in Covent Garden to celebrate Easter (and make a few more quid for themselves). The idea: the world's first edible billboard.
Measuring over 14 feet by 9 feet, this Easter billboard included 860 pounds worth of chocolate in the form of 128 chocolate panels, 72 giant eggs and 10 bunnies. In fact 5 bunnies were smashed during the building process, but there were spares waiting to hop in. We would love to tell you to go along and have a taste yourself, but the billboard, meant to last at least a week, was all eaten up by various passersby in a mere three hours. Maybe next year.
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by amandak
