Juliacentralicious

A Pilgrimage to My Own Personal Mecca-- Cadbury World!

So the Chocolate Society has a yearly trip to Cadbury World, in Birmingham. Initially, of course I was planning to go, but then Natalie (flatmate, the only other girl I knew in the society) ended up not going, and, not wanting to go alone with a bunch of strangers, as well as having the price rise with every week that I was unsure, I opted out. What was even more disappointing was that soon after, I befriended Jasmine, an American girl in one of my classes, who was going on the trip, and she kept telling me that I should have signed up to go.
Then heaven intervened: last minute, the President of the society was unable to go, and then were selling her ticket for cheap-- Jasmine told Alan I wanted to go, and I found myself suddenly with a weekend trip on my hands.
This had an unfortunate collision with Erin being in town for the weekend-- so I hooked up with her Friday night, and we went to the 3 Sisters for a drink. We ended up hanging out for awhile, much to the detriment of my sleep schedule, but it was nice to see her. Hopefully I'll make it down to London to see her soon.
Less than four hours of sleep later, I dragged myself out of bed, packed my things, and stumbled to the train station, ending up there about half an hour early, though Jasmine and Erica were already there. So we waited-- Peter and Becky (keep in mind that I really only knew Jasmine at the time) showed up as well. 6.30, the meeting time, comes and goes, and Alan, the organizer, is still not there with our tickets. Finally, five minutes before the train leaves, he shows up and we get up, very relieved.
The train ride down was uneventful-- we got a table, read, napped, or listened to music/Billy Connolly standup. So we arrived in Birmingham, and grabbed a quick lunch, which was fairly uneventful, though it was nice that we all hit it off right off the bat. In fact, while I was expecting more than six of us, it was nice it turned out that way.
The first part of Cadbury World is a series of educational bits-- you walk through what seems to be the Rainforest Cafe (with Aztecs, of course), that has little signs telling you about chocolate's history. Then you stand in a theater bit and watch four video puppet scenes about chocolate going to Europe. Then they keep us corralled in a waiting area designed like a Victorian street. Then another video-projected-onto-a-set dealie about the Cadbury history. Then it gets more fun: another seemingly-innocuous theater, to explain how to make chocolate-- except someone along the line decided that it would be a good idea for the actual theater to mimic the process that the video explained-- including red heat lamps, shaking benches, ominous giant rollers, puffs of air, and so on.
Finally the part we were there for-- walking through the packaging plant! Conveyor belts of chocolate bars zipped tantalizingly by, safely behind large sheets of plexiglass. We tried to butter up the workers to bring us chocolate, but they would have none of it, sadly. But oh, did it smell good there! After that, we rode Cadabra (think of a poor man's "It's A Small World After All," but with cocoa beans inhabiting it. Also minus the music)-- which was more fun than it should have been, perhaps simply because we were all getting along so well. Then the demonstration area-- we got to pour chocolate into molds, and watch them do all the fancy stuff, though mostly we just queued for the station where you could drop your own nougat filling into a small vat of melted chocolate and then fish it out again-- this time it was worth the wait, as the guy in charge let us take a few at a time since we were so excited about it. Chocolate war paint was put into effect (and kept until after dinner). We ended up in "Purple Planet"-- silly games, basically. The most fun was had on the pressure-sensitive video floor, which cycled through things like squares of chocolate you could jump on to break, or puddles of melted chocolate to jump in. Finally, we watched a montage of all the Cadbury commercials, through the decades-- including the one that was once banned for being too sexual. And finally we ran through the Cadbury shop, buying misshapes in large amounts for super cheap.
Once they kicked us out (to close, not because we were troublemakers!), we sought dinner, which came in the form of a giant Chinese buffet. After, we stopped by Hard Rock for the "traditional" margaritas, and decided to go back to the hotel fairly early since we weren't really up for staying out too late, though we did all hang out in our hotel room pretty late, talking and getting to know each other, which was pretty fun.
Sunday we were up, and had a nice breakfast and then somehow someone thought it was a good idea, when all of us were riding up in the elevator, to all jump at the same time-- so it decided to stop and return us to the ground floor, which was interesting. Finally we were checked out, with most of a day to waste in Birmingham. First stop was Borders, then a delicious Japanese noodle restaurant-- during which Alan introduced us all to Top Trumps, a most addicting card game-- so after lunch, we all had to go back to Borders to buy our own decks. Then we wasted some time in the mall and the Apple store. Then we packed off to the train station-- played more Top Trumps waiting for the train (I told you, addictive). Then, a snag: when we tried to board our train, it was full. I mean FULL. Apparently it's a law here that they can't NOT sell you a ticket for any one train (plus so many open tickets), so despite our seat reservations, we didn't fit on the train, and they had to give us tickets for the next train. Unfortunately, this meant that once we ended up in Newcastle, we had missed the last bus to Edinburgh. Well, the company was required to get us where were going, so they got us a taxi-- and it's about two to three hours home. (The final fare was around 280 pounds!) But it was OK-- we all fit into a seven-seater, and the driver took us to a chippy shop so we could get food (with the meter running, of course)-- we all ate horribly smelly food (curry and chips, garlic bread, chips and cheese) and fell asleep until finally we were dumped unceremoniously in front of Waverly station-- thank god it's a two minute walk from my flat.

And that was the weekend. I've come out of it with a baby-sized bag of chocolate, a new favorite game, and a few more friends. Overall, rather good, I say.

posted by Julia @ 9:53 AM