Last Monday, my year and I went to Wicklow for another class trip. I bet you're probably wondering where on earth it is, hahah. Let's do a quick geography lesson. Basically, it's a county just at the South of Dublin (As you can see on the picture below) I don't really know any other information about it besides the fact it's in the countryside and it has mountains.
Our first stop in our trip was the Chocolate Garden of Ireland. The drive to the place was really long but nonetheless it was worth it and had so much fun. I usually don't mind long drives though because I'm a road trip kind of gal but its just that the roads were bumpy (we are in the countryside after all!) and there were a lot of turns so you could imagine the complaints coming off everyone in my year.
As the Chocolate Garden of Ireland was a bit secluded, we actually had to walk to get there. And that was just fantastic because I was injured and had to walk with crutches. So you could probably imagine how much it sucked. I loved the interior of the place, they made it look like a magical land of chocolates.
They were still setting the place up so my teachers decided to get a nice comforting cup of chocolate (Cheek of them though, they didn't get us any, lol). Heather, the girl in charge of us for the day told us that their hot chocolate is actually one of their popular products. The delicious heaven in a cup which is purchased in the store and was basically a block of chocolate melted in warm milk. Honestly, I regret not buying myself one since I am a massive fan of hot chocolate.
Before we entered the venue, we all got handed a "golden ticket" in attempt to make us feel like we were in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. I was confused at first, since I haven't seen the film but thankfully my teacher explained the reference to me. I can't believe I haven't seen it yet, everyone has seen it!
Heather then started to explain the process of making the chocolate. From the harvesting to the actual making of the product. It was intriguing and fascinating to find out how actual chocolate was made since as consumers, we just see the finished product in shops. Whilst we were taking in all these information, she was also giving out free samples of chocolates. We were able to try their milk chocolate, dark chocolate and white chocolate. Coming from a picky chocolate eater, I actually liked them and did not make me feel as bad when I ate it because I knew, according to Heather's talk, that they used natural and unprocessed ingredients to make their chocolate.
The highlight of the trip was when we had the chance to craft and design our very own chocolate. We had a choice of picking a bear or a dinosaur mould and basically long story short I picked the bear one. We were also given paintbrushes and white chocolate to contrast with the brown colour of the milk chocolate as design. After that, Heather and her co-worker went around with a huge container of oozing melted chocolate which they poured into our moulds. We had to consequently turn our containers so that it wouldn't drip and that it would coat the container evenly. The picture below is our finished "artworks".
I actually fell asleep on our way to our next stop. That mould turning was actually quite tiring (lol, kidding). I rarely sleep during the drive but yeah it was weird how I was tired. Shoutout to one of my main bitches, Lalaine, for capturing the moment. But I low key hate you for this, haha. Please pardon my ugly face whilst sleeping!
Our next stop was the Wicklow Gaol. There wasn't really much to see there apart from jail cells. I couldn't really fully enjoy it since there was a lot of climbing the stairs and I was on crutches, so fun times! So the whole time they were 'exploring', I was just watching them from the first floor. Thankfully my friends didn't mind doing the picture taking for me.
Could you believe this was actually a jail? At first glance, I wouldn't think at all that this was a jail. It just looks a normal mundane building, but sure dont judge a book by its cover right? Apparently this building has been standing for approximately 200 years. Thinking about it, there has probably been a lot of things that happened here. Including deaths. How chilling!
Let me know in the comments below if you've been to something similar in your city/country. Thank you for reading! :) <3
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