Festival de Chocolate - Chocolate Adventures Update

Posted on February 23, 2008
Filed Under Culture

Exciting and full of adventure but not quite in the way we thought : (

First, I had been hoping my nose would have lead me straight to chocolate nirvana as soon as we arrived. Yet, there was no smell of chocolate….hummmm? The weather wasn’t really on side but we planned to arrive in early in Obidos and miss the insanity we heard so much about, and although we arrived early there were already people bustling to get in.

As we walked into the old city through the castle walls (one of my favorite parts of the city) we were greeted with a chocolate carpet decorated with chubby pink hearts that lead us through the main city street, and to what we hoped would be miles of flowing chocolate.

Obidos Chocolate Festival

Along the way we found a few spotted shops selling chocolate, there was of course chocolate cups with “Ginga/Cherry” (an Obidos tradition) and the odd chocolate stand along the way. We also came across the “Melhor Bolo de Chocolate do Mundo/World’s best chocolate cake” - it was nice but don’t know if I’d call it the world’s best. We then found one shop further up - they had really done it up for the event, decorating both the in an outside of their window with chocolate hearts. The pastries inside the window were all we needed to be seduced us inside - chocolate covered strawberries, chocolate hearts, lava chocolate pastries and others, made us decide this was the place to return to on our way out of the city.

Festival de Chocolate Obidos

Mouth watering, and anxious for more… off we went to see what awaited us. There were lots of small shops with chocolate truffles, bonbons and other treats we couldn’t help but sample. We also found a shop selling chocolate soap, bubble bath and even towels, now that would really be something to “soaking in chocolate”, have to remember that for next Valentines day. But we still hadn’t made it to the festival, realizing we were missing our tickets to chocolate heaven, we found the ticket area and its long snaking line…gulp, this could mean a long wait, and it looked longer than my patience to taste more chocolate….grrr. It was a good thing we had a quick fix on our way in, with the “Worlds Best Chocolate Cake”, so we took our place. Fortunately, the line moved quickly and before we knew it we had our tickets/wristbands in hand an a complementary Areo bar each. The organizers clearly saw that coming - waiting too long to satisfy a chocolate craving could cause serious chaos, so a chocolate fix at the end of the line was very good planning! Even though I’m not a milk chocolate fan, the mini fix was a welcome surprise. With our 5euros paid, chocolate in hand and wrist bracelet on….we were armed and dangerous with a passport to chocolate.

Fesival Chocolate in Obidos

The chocolate entrance was decorated with massive colourful eggs for kids to hide between, and a large ball for rolling in…the thought of messing up my balance before eating chocolate didn’t make sense to me, so wasn’t going to take any chances - eating chocolate is serious business. The miniature pony-rides did looked tempting, but I’d have to stand in line with a slew of 5 year olds and figured both kids, and mini pony would appreciate it, if I passed on this one too.

So, on to the matter at hand, chocolate! As we made our way inside the castle we found a chocolate fountain, not exactly the type you’d eat or drink from so that was a bit disappointing, but there was a small display of cacao trees, grinders and roasters surrounded by burlap cacao bags. I would have liked to get in there to try making some actual chocolate, but this section was just for display and not for cacao adventure seekers like us, so guess we’ll have to go to a plantation for that.

We then discovered the candy houses and chocolate displays - all were beautifully done; some more intricate than others but all incredible considering chocolate melts at body temperature and is quite difficult to work with. I especially liked the underwater scene with chocolate of multiple colours creating an ocean bottom view that even included a scuba diver. Beautiful but not edible, as they were behind glass to avoid any chance of rogue nibbling. Seeing so much chocolate naturally lead to a craving of what else, but chocolate, to the candy houses we went.

The candy houses were nicely organized side by side, in their own little section, painted chocolate brown (of course), and sporting dozens of large candy decorations on each roof top, there was no mistaking what could be found there…chocolate! But the one shop that stood out the most was even a shop really, but a massive cupcake structure, in the shape of a cupcake! Inside was of course….dozens of lovely chocolate cupcakes, cheesecake slices, black chocolate cake slices and lots of other mind numbing choices. Taste buds a flutter, we succumbed to the black chocolate slice….it looked like we may need to do penance after a bite, relentless… our forks dove into sin! But then we were surprised, although fluffy, moist and light, it didn’t taste like chocolate; rich, dark chocolate, actually you could hardly taste chocolate at all, hummm? Our taste-buds hungered for over the top chocolate flavour, so to the next shop - fruit and chocolate fondue. The line to get to the front, reminded us of at a rock concert, lots of elbowing and generally mass confusion to get a taste of some oozy chocolate smothered fruit. Feeling this line wasn’t moving fast enough for my taste buds I opted out - I was still at the back of the line, by the way. Anyway, off to another melted chocolate sensation, Chocolate Crepes! I was thrilled to see a crepe master surrounded by jars of Nutella, it reminded me of my trip to Paris, but here I was in Portugal with the same. Best of all a much shorter line, and we were closer to chocolate a lot faster than the chocolate fondue mosh pit we exited minutes earlier. The crepe shop, also gave us a hideout from the rain while we watched and drooled. After what seemed an eternity; about 2 minutes… I was handed my piping hot Nutella filled, folded and floppy crepe, heaven, finally.

The rain wasn’t letting up, but we did manage to pick a gift from Chocotelegram, a fun concept of writing messages in chocolate. We also found a chocolate maker and museum curator from Spain, as well as some other foreign chocolates such as Zotter Chocolates - truth be told, we got a little treat from each of them, so we’ll each be filling our sweet tooth for the next few days.

We dropped by the Children’s Chocolate Village, the little ones of course busy playing, with chocolate grins giving away what they’d been up to. Not surprising, we also witnessed a few tantrums with kids wailing and deploring “I don’t want to share my chocolate!!!” I completely sympathized with their plight, and would have done the same should someone have taken away my chocolate.

We had come to the last part of the chocolate festival inside the castle walls, but as we exited we found a new detour, inside an old church that backs into the castle. And what a find, hiding inside were some spectacular sculptures dedicated to the “Portuguese Navigators” plus chefs working with chocolate, bingo! They were incredibly detailed, beautiful works of art very impressive and way to beautiful to eat. Some of these ships featured had details down to the cannon balls and wound rope, incredible. The chef’s working with chocolate, weren’t working on anything as ambitious but it was interesting to watch them in action. One complaint, they could have been a bit more friendly, and shared some of that warm chocolate they were working with, but that’s just me.

Bellyfull of chocolate we headed back to the chocolate heart shop, we spotted on the way in, and scooped up some of those delicious pastries we spotted earlier. These would make a lovely dessert for the country dinner we had been invited to after the festival. Choosing just a few was painful, but taking some home let us extend the chocolate festival a few more hours.

Coming to the end of the festival we noticed a few things that would be nice to see for next year, like being able to interact more with chocolate and learn more about it. There’s lots happening in the chocolate world right now and we felt that was missing from the festival, there wasn’t much diversity in types of chocolate besides milk, dark and white. Chocolate is also very diverse almost like wine, so it would have been nice to dive into the culture of chocolate and experience it in different ways. And although the chocolate sculptures were beautiful it would have been great to see this action going on live and in person, and of course to smell that incredible scent of chocolate in the air! Maybe we were expecting to much but we enjoyed the day and Obidos is a beautiful little Vila with or without chocolate.

So that concluded our chocolate adventures in Obidos, or so we thought. On our way out of the city we decided to take a mini road trip to Peniche to kill a couple of hours we had before dinner. Peniche was lovely but what happened next wasn’t - stopping at a gas station to fuel up, we noticed one of our tires was out of air. Attempts to fill it simply caused the sound of blowing air…not so good. This meant changing a flat in the rain - oh fun! Good thing we were happy on chocolate. Happiness didn’t last long when we realized we didn’t have a spare…hummm. That little backup spare we thought had been in the trunk, didn’t exist…but Moses did find a battery! If you’re not familiar with this picture, we have a Mini and until that very moment, it had never given us a problem so we never thought to look for the spare. So what now? A few phone calls later to friends and family we discovered Mini’s don’t have spares…they’re special that way, and tire comes with a built in “No Flat” system, so it can be driven for a number of kilometers without needed a spare… strange, but cool. Good news was, we could get home! Bad news, we soon realized, we couldn’t drive out to the country dinner we had been looking forward too.

It all worked out in the end, but the flat did take 3 days to fix, since we ended up needing a replacement and finding a “No Flat” system tire in Lisbon during a triennial down pour, wasn’t exactly easy and delayed things a little. So we send a special thanks to our friends, and their 3 cats, who gave us shelter from the rain and we gladly shared our chocolate!

Other Related Posts on Chocolate:

Chocolate Salami Portuguese Recipe

Chocolate Festival in Obidos Details

Chocolate Truffles & Adventures

Comments

3 Responses to “Festival de Chocolate - Chocolate Adventures Update”

Festival Chocolate Obidos - Chocolate Truffle Recipe on February 23rd, 2008 10:25 pm

[…] promised, we will be back with some delicious photos to share with you. So check back with us […]
Move To Portugal on February 27th, 2008 8:09 am

Chocolate adventures!

Are they the best adventures ever?

Lovely pictures and great post
Eddie on February 27th, 2008 12:39 pm

Chocolate adventures are always good, the flat we could have done without…the good thing was we had chocolate treats with us in case we were stranded!:o)