I must have been exceptionally tired this day, because I only have a few pictures from everything that we did!
We started off our morning with a business visit to Partner's Group, a private investment company.
The presentation was really interesting, but the best part was afterward!
They had pots of warm milk with little packets of Caotina hot chocolate, and it was easily the best hot chocolate I had ever tasted.
I took a picture of the package so I could look for it during our time in Switzerland, and I ended up finding a big tin of it when we were in the Alps the next day!
I still have about half left (almost a year later!) and I'm pretty sure I'll be ordering some once I run out!
We had some time to burn before our chocolate factory tour (yes, you read that right, we were going to tour a SWISS chocolate factory!), so we made our way into the city of Lucerne.
You guys, if I thought I loved Switzerland before Lucerne, then that city definitely sealed the deal.
LOOK at that!
I think I should move there :)
We walked along the bridge where I took this photo and I was just in heaven with how clean, simple, quiet, and serene this city felt.
After a couple of hours we got on the bus to drive through the Swiss countryside to the Maestrani chocolate factory!
These bus rides are some of my favorite memories with the people I spent a month of my life touring Europe with.
On this particular trip, our bus driver, Patrick, made us all sing some very terrible karaoke.
I know someone has some videos somewhere that I need to steal!
Now, back to the factory tour!
Let me tell ya... the chocolate... oh the chocolate is literally heaven!
At the beginning of the tour they show you a video about the history of Maestrani, which you watch while eating endless samples of their chocolate.
This was before the tour had officially started and I thought I had already died and gone to heaven!
They have a rule that throughout the tour you absolutely must be eating their fresh samples as you walk through.
(Think Costco sample day times 1,000,000 and with the greatest chocolate you've ever had.)
They make their chocolate with cocoa beans from Peru and with milk from cows that live in the Swiss Alps. These cows have a very organic diet, drinking water from the alps and only feeding on the flowers and vegetation that grows in the mountains.
I wish I could have just had a glass of milk from one of the Swiss cows!
At the end of the tour they have a store where you can buy everything you just tasted (and more!).
After getting something for everyone in my family and enough to keep a stock for myself for a good year, I had spent $60 on chocolate alone.
Even though I was so sick from chocolate by the end of the tour I so do not regret spending that much!
In fact, as I'm writing this I'm enjoying my second to last bar of chocolate, Orange Noir, or Dark Chocolate Orange :)
By the time we got back into Zurich we were so sick from chocolate and needed some real food, so we headed back to Louis ' Take-Away that we had the night before.
It really was that good! Or maybe we were just really starting to miss the USA...!
While we were eating we heard some music nearby, so we walked down to this romantic little cobblestone square with restaurants all around.
There was a band there playing called SoulManiacs, and they were pretty good!
We stayed to listen and dance, and also entertain ourselves with some incredibly drunk people ;)
It was so fun to stumble across that little gem!
It felt like such an authentic moment and I absolutely loved it.
The music all throughout Europe, from the guitarists and singers to the accordion players, really added a lot of value and experience to the trip for me.
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