Edinburgh Zoo & The Chocolatorium
I planned a little surprise trip for Sarah as her birthday was coming up. We arrived at the airport without her knowing where we were going or what we were doing which was a nice bit of excitement for her - although it was hard to coax her into bringing clothes that would be appropriate for the unique activities I had booked us in for! The first being the Penguin feeding experience at Edinburgh Zoo and the second being a tour of the Chocolatarium.
Edinburgh Zoo is STEEP. The calves were burning walking up those hills. We saw plenty of animals while waiting for our keeper experience - Koalas and warty pigs were our favourites of the morning. From there, we headed to the Keeper hut to get our intro, safety talk and pick up some wellies. Andrew, our guide, waddled us over to the penguin enclosure and explained the different colour tags they use and the types of penguins in the zoo.
Edinburgh Zoo has gentoos, rockhoppers and king penguins (these guys are big!) and we were going to be feeding the gentoos. I'm not sure why the other penguins didn't come to investigate us with our bucket of fish, but neither the kings nor rockhoppers ever came close to us.
We were kept at the gate and quickly surrounded by the little birds. One in particular, named Hagrid, stood on a rock beside me and pecked me in the leg over and over again for fish. Other great names were Maggie Hatcher and Darth Wader...
We had a great time feeding the penguins and the experience lasts a good while. We chatted away to Andrew, slowly fed the birds their fish and tried to avoid overfeeding the babies. Andrew got some great pictures of us as well.
The Chocolatarium is only a short walk from the main street and is tucked away in a quiet little corner. The tour includes an informative little talk about single-origin chocolates, cacao trees and the different countries that produce them. It was really interesting and our tour guide kept it fun. We were also treated to a fancy little hot chocolate while we listened, it was very rich but was nice to sip.
From there we headed into the chocolate-making room. We got to select a mould, all of which were Scotland themed, and were giving piping bags full of chocolate along with a lovely selection of pots to add flavour and crunch to our bars. I made a milk chocolate highland cow shaped bar with fudge brownie chunks and some little sprinkles of white chocolate.
We placed our bars onto trays and popped the in the fridge to collect at the end of the tour. The chocolate they give you is really tasty so I'm excited to dig into the bar soon. Our guide gave us a little explainer for the different %s and how you make the different types of chocolate.
From here we were brought into the tasting room where we experienced lots of different flavours and strengths of chocolates as a group. It was kind of like a little wine tasting and there was some really...unique.... aspects of it that you'd have to experience for yourself.
We had a wonderful time in Edinburgh, a city that I've really connected with this year. I often struggle to keep secrets from Sarah, she's my best friend after all, so I'm delighted that I was able to keep schtum about this adventure and give her what really was an experience like no other. Happy birthday honey.