maggies_lens

Saturday morning I had my hens. I really didn't want the traditional hens thing, you know what I mean. Not into strippers and that sort of stuff. I'd found this chocolate tour of Melbourne thing when I was doing my TAFE course and decided I'd really like to do it. The morning was HECTIC, getting all sorts of stuff done, then Melissa arrived and we took off. Picked up mum and Rhonda and headed into the city. We had a nice healthy breakfasty thing of soup (from Souperman in the QV Centre! LOL!) as we'd arrived quite early. Tanya and Shar showed up shortly after we were done, and we joined the Walk people at the first stop, New Zealand Natural. We got taken to a few choccy places in Melbourne (New Zealand Natural, Cacao Fine Chocolates, Koko Black, Lindt and Ganache) and got to sample some of the best quality chocolate Melbourne has to offer, and learn a little bit of Melbourne architecture. None of the Cadbury rubbish either; we had REAL chocolate. Was just marvelous. Did you know it takes 15 years to be a Master Chocolatier? And you can't get the qualification without studying in Europe for at least part of the time. REAL chocolate doesn't make you fat either, it's all the oil and refined sugar that gets put into commercial grade chocolate that's so bad for you. We got to learn how chocolate is made, the different types of chocolate and how the modern methods came to be. In all, it was awesome. And yes we got to sample :) The only one I didn't like had champagne ganache in it. I hate ganache at the best of times, and hate champagne so yeah :D By the end we'd had enough choccy! We ended with afternoon tea at Ganache Chocolates where we were given INCREDIBLE cake. I chose to have peppermint tea to compliment mine, best idea EVER! Helped to cleanse my palate and make everything taste quite divine.
Tanya and Shar went home to pick up Sophie from their babysitter, I drove first Rhond and then mum home, then Melissa and I went and saw the horses. They hadn't been out of their paddock since they arrived so were a bit on edge. But they need to get used to it all. Gave them a feed, let them walk around in the round yard so they could look at things, treated Destiny with some Illium the vet had dropped by. We went back to my place after horses were put away and grabbed Craig and went to Hog Breath's for AWESOME dinner.
Fell into bed that night and slept like the dead. Today has been a very slothful day, not done anything much :) Have liked it :D

I look like a freakin' rabbit in this one!

*giggle*

The pure liquid chocolate was a HIT!

Freakin' A!!!!!

Got to learn how they get these funky patterns onto the choccies too :)

Random bokeh :D This is how the world looked after liquid chocolate ;) I did actually take this shot ;D

Not sure what Shar was plotting here but it scared me

Yummmmmm...

It's Tanya's b'day on Tuesday so we had an impromptu celebration at the last place :D

Random arty moment while waiting for mum and Rhonda to get OUT of the bloody shops :P

Destiny was so confused in the round yard. No idea what to do. So after walking around with Danny, she came and stood with us :) That's the illium on her chest. Nasty but great stuff.