Getting up at 6:30 this morning made me glad not to have gone out the night before. I had packed my backpack last night, so I wasn’t in too much of a rush this morning. After packing way too much stuff for my Paris trip, I was trying to bring as little as possible. The only heavy thing I packed was the bottle of gin for my friends and I. I enjoyed a breakfast of corn flakes and coffee, then headed to the chartered bus for our trip.
My coffee kicked in and I was feeling very awake by the time I got to place de Verdun. I said good morning to my friends and plugged in my headphones for the bus ride. I enjoyed some nice views of the french countryside and vineyards as I listened to some Frank Sinatra.
Here’s a low quality pic I took of the countryside
After an hour and a half, we finally reached the chocolate factory in Valhrona. I got off the bus hoping my experience would be identical to that of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I warned my classmates not to drink from the chocolate river, as I didn’t want see anyone get sucked up the tube like Augustus Gloop.
Here’s a picture of the chocolate place.
We started off our tour with a chocolate tasting lesson. We came into a room with a circular table where we everyone had six different types of chocolate and a cup of water. I had to resist every urge to not shove them all in my mouth.
The Chocolates: Two white, two milk, and two dark.
The “chocolate expert” came in and instructed us on all the steps for correctly taste testing. The key was to use all of your senses. We started off with the white chocolate. The first step was to smell the chocolate, and we all discussed what we smelled. The next step was to hold it by your ear and snap it in half. How loud the snap was could tell you how long the cocoa beans took to be harvested. After this, we took our first small bite trying to identify the tastes. We once again discussed the flavors and tried to take in the aroma. Finally, we took the second bite and focused on the different stages of flavors. This might seem silly written out, but doing all this really made the flavors of the chocolate come out. My favorites were the first milk chocolate and last dark chocolate.
We were provided with a basic guide for the initial, middle, and final tastes.
It was something like:
Initial: Fruits or Flowers
Mid Taste: Nut/seeds or spices
Final: Undergrowth vs Toasted/Smoked.
I could actually taste the flowers and undergrowth in some of the chocolates surprisingly.
After the testing was over, we had an hour and half to walk around the building where they have various tasting, smelling, touching and other stations. We didn’t get to see the actual chocolate production, but it was still very cool. There was a station with a bunch of spices and one of them was chili peppers. For some reason, Sebastian and I thought it was good idea to move the glass and eat one of them. Dylan saw us do this and tried it as well. Dylan is someone who eats ghost peppers for fun, so he didn’t think it was spicy at all. Sebastian and I on the other hand, were dying from the spiciness for a solid 20 minutes. It was a dumb idea and I lost all capabilities to taste the chocolate anymore.
After an hour of walking around the facility, I had definitely hit my maximum consumption for chocolate. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever eaten that much chocolate before in my life. We were eating lunch at the facility’s restaurant, but still had thirty minutes to kill so we went for a walk.
We were right by the river, so I took these stupid pictures.
Another random fact about France is that literally no one ever picks up their dog poop. It is everywhere and it’s always a terrible game to avoid stepping in it. Ryan lost this game today and got dog poop all over his Jordans. I felt bad.
We headed back to the restaurant and Ryan headed to the bathroom to clean his shoes. The lunch was good but nothing too crazy. We had a salad that had a kind of weird chocolate vinegar dressing. The chocolate made the salad taste a bit odd.
The Salad
The main course was a dish that somewhat resembled chicken pot pie and was decent. Despite being full on chocolate, I finished all my food, wine, and the chocolate mousse for dessert.
The Main Course
Safe to say after the tasting, tour, and dinner, I don’t want to eat chocolate again for a very long time. We headed back onto the bus for the hour ride to Lyon. I was stuffed with food and slept the entire way.
When I woke up, we were in Lyon. I technically have been in Lyon three times before, but it was always while travelling elsewhere so I don’t really count it. We headed to our hotel immediately to drop of our luggage. The hotel was pretty basic, but had clean bedrooms and bathrooms, so I couldn’t complain. I was sharing a room with Harry, but we had our own beds this time.
After charging our phones for a bit, Harry and I headed out into the city to explore. The only place we planned to stop was Uniqlo. Lyon is like a bigger version of Grenoble and very pretty.
Here are some pictures from our walk:
Cool statue of Louis XIV, featuring Harry in front.
I feel like every European city needs to have a giant ferris wheel for some reason. I thought the contrast of the clay ground and bright neon lights was really cool.
This street had a bunch of interesting stores and little art galleries. We ran into Ryan while we were over here and he joined Harry and I.
Andre Ampere, came up with the idea of electric circuits and the unit of Amps is named after him. As engineers currently in a circuits class, we were very excited to find this statue.
Harry and I found some random church and went inside for a few minutes. France has no shortages of pretty churches.
There was a protest nearby so we saw a ton of riot police with riot shields and tear gas guns. The riot shields really reminded me of Modern Warfare 2.
We found some random live performance and watched for a few songs. It featured weird beat boxing and I thought they were pretty bad.
After the live performance, the three of us headed to Uniqlo. There isn’t one in Grenoble and I was looking for a pair of cropped trousers. There was a new Uniqlo U spring line that had a lot of cool clothes. I was proud because I successfully asked one of employees in French if they had my size in a certain pair of jeans. Ryan and I both fell in love with this one pair of light wash dad jeans and each bought a pair. We headed back to the hotel after this.
We had some time to kill until dinner, so I went to hang out with Jonathon and Nick in their room. We were watching the Ireland vs. France rugby game. It was funny because Mats sent me a snapchat from Boston and was actually watching the game as well.
Eventually everyone came back and we headed out to dinner in a big group. We ended up splitting up because some of didn’t want to do the full four course meal. Ellie, Kim, Elizabeth and I headed to a restaurant called Leon de B. I got a pretty good burger and a really big blonde beer. Both were great.
Me and My Beer. It was chugged at the end.
My Burger
After dinner I headed back to the hotel with the girls to start pregaming for the club. Dylan, Harry, Nick, Jonathon and Katie were still at their dinner, we took our time and enjoyed some gin and tonics courtesy of me. The other group’s meal ended up taking super long so we headed out to the club without them, some of them would meet us later.
The club we were going to was called Ayer’s Rock Boat, named after the giant red rock in Australia. I only know this because of a research project I did on Australia in the fifth grade.
The club was right by our hotel and on a boat
The cover charge was only 10 euros, so we checked our coats and headed to bar for some jaegerbombs. Jaegerbombs are surprisingly always cheaper than beer in French bars and clubs. We headed to the dance area and stayed there for a while. Eventually we needed some air and headed up stairs. We had some trouble finding fresh air because nearly every person inside the club was smoking cigarettes. After some navigation through the crowds, we found a nice open doorway leading to the deck.
While we were standing there, I randomly started talking to these three French girls. They all were poli-sci students, visiting Lyon for some event or convention. My BU friends headed back to the dance floor, but I ended up talking to the French girls for a while. We were talking a lot about French politics. This may not be your typical club conversation, but nonetheless I found it very interesting.
I learned that a lot of the young French people don’t like Macron, the president of France. I had known a tiny bit about the French elections, and just assumed most really liked him because he was young and less crazy than Le Pen. The girls were telling me that they felt like he was too focused on making France an economic powerhouse, rather than helping its people. Like the election in the US, they saw it as the lesser of two evils when voting for him. One of the girls who I had was talking to the most, Lily, had actually supported Jean-Luc Mélenchon. This was very left candidate that I understood to be like a French Bernie Sanders.
After a bit, Harry and Sebastian arrived at the club and joined me with my new friends. We all headed to the dance floor together. There is truly no greater feeling than when the DJ puts on an American song after playing a lot of house music. Sebastian and I were going crazy on the dance floor and I quickly lost my voice. It was a really fun time.
I ended up talking to Lily and Emma for a while again after we got tired of dancing. Before we knew it, it was 2 AM, so Harry, Sebastian and I headed back to the hotel. We had to be up at 7:45 and were not looking forward to it.
I left the club not only having my dancing urges satisfied, but with a greater understanding of French politics.
Foreign Tourist with No Grasp of the Local Language 
Leave a comment