The Sweetest Place on Earth

That's Hershey, Pennsylvania's tag line and it's relatively accurate, considering the amount of free chocolate we were treated to during our stay. We spent 3 nights and 3 days in Hershey, with the plan to go to their Haunted attraction, Hershey Park in the Dark, Friday night.

Unfortunately, the park was closed throughout the duration of our stay due to heavy rain and frigid weather. We made the best of our getaway though, enjoyed the time away from the apartment, work and bills and just enjoyed our time together.

The first place we visited was Hershey's Chocolate World.

With giant chocolate mascots, how could we resist?

While we were there, we went on the Hershey Factory tour (which is cheesy, fun and not in the factory!) where we giggled and felt briefly that there should have been oompa-loompas dancing about instead of cows:

We also participated in a chocolate tasting "adventure" where we were given chocolate with different amounts of cacao in them, and asked to identify different flavor notes. We also learned a bit about the history and origins of chocolate:

After that, we ate dinner at a delicious pizza place in town before retiring to our room to watch 'The Evil Dead'. Even though I was on vacation, I continued on with the 31 Days of Halloween blog party. Good thing I brought so many movies too, since nothing is open in Hershey after 8pm most nights.

The following day we took a tour of the Hershey Story museum, which chronicles the history of the Hershey company since it's founder's birth. We learned some really interesting stuff, like that Milton Hershey founded a school for orphans, because he and his wife couldn't have children of their own. He left his entire fortune to the school when he passed and the school is still open today, providing housing, schooling and a savings fund and college options for underprivileged children all over the country.

We also saw an interesting clock in the museum and warmed up with some hot chocolate and chocolate rum cake:

Afterwards, we decided to explore the surrounding towns a bit, since it was raining and too cold to walk the main streets and discovered a bowling alley, where we stopped and played a few games. In true form, I rolled a gutter ball in every single frame:

We ended the night with a viewing of 'Elvira: Mistress of the Dark'. My husband had never seen an Elvira movie before and was completely unprepared for the cheeseball nature of the movie. I loved it as usual. :)

On our final day in Hershey, we started the morning by finding the nearest theatre and watching 'Where the Wild Things Are', which I've been looking forward to since I heard about it being made. The preview has been tugging at my heart strings since it was released and I've been on the verge of tears every time I've seen it; it moves something nostalgic inside of me. The movie was everything I had hoped it would be; whimsical, innocent, touching, beautiful... I cried uncontrollably at one point and left the theatre a mess of swollen eyes and bright red nose.

Once I collected myself, my lovely and I hopped on a trolley ride:

We also did a hot chocolate taste testing, which let us sample cocoa from different areas of the world:

Chocolate tasting is serious business

Ecuador had my favourite cocoa

We wrapped up our day with a romantic dinner at a pub in a neighboring town, after which, we snuggled at the hotel room and watched 'Shaun of the Dead'.

Chocolate, romance, zombies, what more could a girl ask for on vacation?

How about a trip to a now leveled ghost town on the way home? For the seventeenth day of October, we took a detour home to stop in Centralia, PA, an abandoned mining town, with fires burning in the Earth beneath it that will continue to burn for many more years. There is nothing left of the town, but the cracked and smoldering remains of PA-Rt 61:

An eerie, fascinating and ultimately sad place.