Cadbury World

Once again, the kids and I had a fun day out while Andrew was working.  He had meetings in Birmingham, so we  tagged along to visit the home of Cadbury chocolate.  The Cadbury brothers established the factory out in the countryside near a little brook by the name of Bourn.  They named their village Bournville and along with their factory, built homes, parks, schools, and recreational facilities for their workers. 

We started off our day by watching a movie about the Cadbury family and how they developed their famous Dairy Milk Chocolate.  Their secret is a cup and a half of fresh milk in every 1/2 pound of chocolate.  As we exited the movie we were given small cups of liquid chocolate and allowed to add our choice of sweet ingredients.  The kids chose white chocolate buttons, while I chose shortcake biscuits.  This was the beginning of a long day of chocolate consumption!

The first of many chocolate treats.

We moved on to the "Experience".  This took about an hour and a half to walk through and included the entire history of chocolate, from the Aztecs up to present day.  We also learned about Cadbury's history of advertising, the packaging process, and a few other fun things that really had nothing to do with chocolate making!  In case we got hungry during the "Experience", they handed us each two full size candy bars to snack on.  We started off by eating the Curly Wurly, which was delicious, but I was terribly afraid the caramel might pull out some of my fillings.  I also found myself humming BLINDED BY THE LIGHT by Manfred Mann, because I swear there is a reference in that song to a Curly Wurly.  However, I dont have a good track record with song lyrics, so I could be way off!!  Near the end of the tour we were given the chance to write our names in chocolate!

By this point we were so sugared up we thought it best to have some real food for lunch in the Cadbury Cafe.  Then we hit the gift shop so we could buy some more chocolate for later!