Austria--day 4

Today we visited Riegersburg and the Zotter chocolate factory. Grandma and Grandpa had been fighting with the GPS in the rental car all week, but with the help of Uncle Michi, they thought they had finally programmed that darn computer voice to lead us to the right place. Thirty minutes and several very small streets later, the GPS lady informed us we had arrived at our destination. Unfortunately, the dead end road in the middle of a pasture looked nothing like the Riegersburg castle we remembered.

Back to Omi's for a real map, and Grandma led us there the old fashioned way. I can just imagine that darn GPS lady saying, "Oh, you wanted to go to that Riegersburg."

Our first stop was Zotter Chocolate, one of our favorite places of the whole trip. Having grown up taking several field trips to the Hershey factory in California, all I can say is this was soooo much better. Why? They let you taste EVERYTHING!

There is a lot to taste, and you can eat as much as you want. Zotter is a specialty company that hand-makes chocolate in every flavor combination imaginable, and when I say every flavor I mean every flavor. Think Bertie Botts minus the ear wax and vomit. I tried a raspberry-coconut-fish-marshmallow bar. It really wasn't too bad. I also tasted pure cocoa beans which were very nasty.

At one point in the tour, you could sample the "drinking chocolate" which are special chocolate bars that you melt in hot milk. Emily enjoyed her cinnamon banana flavored chocolate milk, but Natalie's coconut ginger wasn't really a hit with any of us.

Luckily, Grandma and Grandpa were veterans of this tour and warned us in the beginning only to take little tastes because the best stuff was at the end. (I'm sure that the tour developers are counting on most people being too sick at this point to eat very much. ) Before leaving the tour, you can stand in front of a small conveyor belt where all of the different flavors of chocolate bars go by and you can taste all you want. Natalie's favorite was the "pineapple coconut balls", mine was the "raspberry marshmallow", and Emily's was the "cinnamon apple honey". None of us wasted any tummy space on "peanuts and ketchup" or "bacon bits".

After eating our fill, we piled back in the car and drove on to Riegersburg Castle, where once again, Grandpa gave the girls the choice of hike or ride and then grumbled about having to pay for the tram.


We learned a lot about medieval life, including the fact that most witches are red-heads, (bwaaa-ha-ha) and Grandpa and Emily even tried out the two-seater potty before the drive back home.