Festivals and Chocolates

Hi, it’s Kiera! Today I’m blogging from Edinburgh, Scotland. I just want to start with a summary of yesterday when we came here; so first, in the morning we took a taxi from our Saint-Malo AirBnB to the train station and took a train Rennes, where we waited for a bit then took another train back to Paris, and in Paris we took separate taxis to an aero bus station, ate lunch and then took the aero bus to BVA and took a plane to the Edinburgh airport where we took a tram to the town center and an Uber to our hotel. My mom called this our trains, planes and automobiles day. Anyway, at the beginning of today my mom blogged about our bike tour and after that we split up; me and my dad went down the street to see the ginormous Scottish comedy and TV festival called the Fringe Festival (I might have spelled Fringe wrong). We didn’t get there at the beginning so the first act we saw was China, where some people were posing in pretty costumes and others were carrying sticks attached to a dragon and we’re running it through the parade. Next were some people waving flags and twirling sticks. Then came some African drummers with a scarecrow thing behind them and a dance troupe. It was the end so we tried to get to the beginning to see the part we missed but we only saw more of the dragon and a group of dancers with heavy turquoise suits and tambourines. After that we went back to the end and watched the Colombian dance troupe do one last performance with their bagpipes and drums. When they were done my dad asked a girl if I could take a picture with her and she let me get one with the whole group!

After that everyone started heading down some stairs to a theatre thing in the Edinburgh castle park. We went to Boots (a British pharmacy) and then decided to go down and see what was happening. We stood there for awhile until a man started speaking and then found seats as he called the drummer groups forward (my dad cheered really loudly when ‘our friend’ came to the front. Just as we realized we had to leave the Americans and Caribbeans who we hadn’t had the chance to see before played and we cheered before heading to our next activity.

The Chocolatarium was amazing! First our tour guide taught us about cacao beans and the history of chocolate making and then we went into a kitchen so we could make our own chocolate (see pictures)! We could pick milk or dark chocolate (I did milk chocolate) and then pick a mold (I did something that made it look like a professional bar) and then we could add toppings (I did too many to remember). When we were done we went to another room where we learned about how chocolate used to be a drink and we got to try it (it was really bitter) then we tried chocolates from all over South America (see pictures) and as an ending they showed us lots of different flavored chocolates and we could take as many as we wanted but our parents had a limit: I had raspberry, Scottish mint, coconut, cherry white chocolate and caramel (I think). Then we took our chocolates and bought whatever we wanted from the shop. We got a phone. Bye!

Our Hungarian tour guide showing us a model cacao bean with wax

Me adding toppings after filling up the chocolate pieces

Chocolates from South America (Venezuela is the most % milk chocolate and Belize is the most dark)

Me and Colombian dancers (the one my dad asked is knelt down to the left of me)

African drummers with scarecrow thing

Outdoor Theatre before performance started