Perugia and the Eurochocolate Festival

I woke up at 5:30 this morning, and somehow I summoned the energy to have a coffee yogurt, get dressed, and leave for the train station. I walked with USC Di, the only other person willing to get up ridiculously early. We boarded the train at 6:40, I napped for most of the way, and we arrived at Tarantola, a city on the way to Perugia, at around 8. There we had a short layover until the next train, which dropped us off at the Perugia station.

All aboard the Chocotrain!

From the station we stopped at a caffe where Di bought a pastry (I had brought an apple from the apartment to eat), walked up a very steep hill to get to the old gates of the city, and then we entered Eurochocolate Festival territory.

In front of the Eurochocolate sign.

Me and Di in front of the same sign.

Lots of stairs in this city.

And steep hills.

Like I said last post, we sort of stumbled upon this chocolate festival by chance. But from what I read up on it last night, it's the biggest European chocolate festival, and all the European chocolate companies congregate in this city to sell tons of chocolate to tourists. Luckily we didn't have to spend a ton of money to try a lot of chocolate, because they also sell something called a Chococard for 6 euros (they like sticking the prefix "choco" in front of everything here, and it became a running joke to add choco to random words; eg choco-backpack, choco-camera, choco-Deena). With the Chococard you go around to different booths and pick up chocolate samples and other stuff. It was nice.

More Perugian streets.

 We bought the Chococards from Rocca Paolina, an underground fortress place that used to belong to the pope, and now has meat and cheese shops and is too dark to take pictures in. I think it's normally a good place for tourists to learn about Perugia's history, but today it was filled with Eurochocolate-related things. We exited Rocca Paolina and walked straight into the festival.

The festival! The festival!

View from a balcony area at the edge of the festival.

Selfie.

The first stop at the festival was the Fage yogurt booth, where the Chococard got us a free yogurt. It counted as second breakfast for me.

Greek yogurt with chocolate sauce on top.

 We then walked through all the booths and inhaled the glorious aroma of chocolate and listened to the chocolate-themed music drifting from the speakers.

Chocolate fountains.

We got some Chococard hot chocolate from the Ciobar booth. In the back you can the whipped cream woman, wearing the white whipped cream hat. She spritzed the cream onto our drinks.

Tasted particularly good because it was a cold morning.

The Pernigotti booth was next to Ciobar. Here's a giant jar of chocolate spread. There were also chocolate slot machines here that I didn't catch a picture of, but I got some Pernigotti chocolates from there too.

Chocolate furniture? Sure, why not!

Next up was the Lindt area. They had a theater area where they demonstrated how they made chocolate, but we got there in between shows. We were still able to look at some of the exhibit though.

The Lindor guy and I, outside the theater.

Better view of the Lindt set up.

Lindor chocolate display.

This woman on the stage explained where Lindt got their cocoa beans.

Another chocolate display.

 After the Lindt stuff, we continued walking through the festival, picking up Chococard yummies and other assorted chocolate samples. Here's some pictures of the highlights.

A huge chocolate shoe.

Little shoes made of chocolate.

This cracked me up.

The Perugina chocolate factory is here in Perugia. Baci chocolates are their thing.

 One of the Chococard goodies was a selfie stick that came with a bar of chocolate.

Now I can look even more like a silly American tourist!

A gigantic chocolate selfie stick.

The piazza with the giant selfie stick.

Another view of the piazza.

A good view of Perugia.

Chocolate-related sculpture.

At around 11:30, three other roommates who had taken a later train met us at the festival. Unfortunately, at that same time the festival, which wasn't exactly quiet before but was at least manageable, suddenly exploded with people. I was glad I got there earlier before you had to start waiting in lines to get chocolate samples.

More of Perugia. Pretty city.

Chocotime clock and chocolamp.

At around 12 I sat with USC Di and Carina and waited as USC Megan and Vanessa got their own chocoselfie sticks. Carina bought some churros and chocolate sauce to share, but I also wanted some real lunch food. We decided to split up, because by that time Di and I had finished collecting our Chococard items and samples, and the others were just starting. So both Di and I left the festival area of the city and started walking around the rest of the town, where it was much quieter and more peaceful. We first walked to Via dell'Acquedotto, a street that looks like it was built on an old aqueduct. It's more like a bridge than a street, and it gave a great view of the city.

The street.

Me on the aqueduct.

More stairs.

View looking back from the aqueduct.

After that, we made a sort of circle around the city, mostly just wandering because we had run out of attractions that we absolutely wanted to see. We drifted in the general direction of the train station, though, and we eventually ended up back at Rocca Paolina. We wandered in circles around there for a bit, trying to find some sort of museum, but in the end we gave up and took a long escalator down to the base of the hill outside the Perugian walls.

More hills. Pretty hills, but they still require a lot of leg strength.

 We then walked back to the train station. The bus we were taking back to Florence was a little ways past the train station at a parking lot in Piazza Umbria Jazz.

There was an amusement park next to the parking lot that looked like fun. We had a bus to catch though.

The bus left the parking lot at 4:20, and the ride to Florence took exactly 2 hours. During the ride I really tried to stay awake the whole time, but I did one of those things where you wake up all of a sudden without realizing you had fallen asleep in the first place. All that walking really wore me out.

After arriving back in Florence, I made a quickie Conad stop to buy milk, and then went back to the apartment to make pasta for dinner, using fancy flat spaghetti with scalloped edges because it was on sale a couple days ago. I also sampled some of the chocolate I brought home, and I have to say that Pernigotti chocolate is amazing, and I will try to find some to bring home.

Also, Di took some other pictures with her phone (and brand-new selfie stick) that illustrate more of the festival. When she sends me them, I'll add them to the photo collection above.