After our last summer’s planned trip to Sweden was cancelled due to the Covid pandemic, we kept an eye on which, if any, European countries would open up first. That turned out to be Iceland, so that became our summer of 2021 trip. We booked the trip in July with the hope that more people would get vaccinated, and that would help open things up more, which actually happened – we don’t need to quarantine in Iceland at all now, which is a great thing.

But, out usual plan of flying out of Toronto wouldn’t work this time since the Canadian border has remained closed. So, we found cheap tickets out of Newark, which is seven hours away from Cuyahoga Falls. Since we have never flown out of Newark before, Meredith thought it wise that we should get part of the way there a day before, and so we settled on getting to the Harrisburg/Hershey Pennsylvania area today (Friday). We’ll fly out tomorrow, but we are only two-and-a-half hours away from the airport. We’ll still leave two hours of traffic time as well.

All of which to say, we got to tour Hershey today, going to Chocolate World. I’ve been on the factory tour of a local chocolate company in Ohio, so I thought this would be the same thing, but a little bigger and slicker. I was quite wrong. The Hershey complex is huge. It is home to a resort, an amusement park, a water park, a large stadium for converts (country singer Luke Bryan played there tonight), and of course there was Chocolate World itself. There have been no factory tours since the early 1970’s. Chocolate World is instead a collection of shows and venues, usually related to ways to get you to open a wallet.

We took the free tour, which shows how chocolate is made. But, being a tourist destination, the demonstration is a full-featured ride. You ride in a little car, and see animatronic cows and candy bars along the way while your virtual guide explains how chocolate is made (about a dozen different steps). Fun fact we learned – Hershey’s is one of the only chocolate makers in the world to use fresh milk (others use powered milk).

Chocolate World was fairly mobbed when we went on the tour, but was packed when we got out; a thunder storm had moved in, so the amusement park shut down for a time, and many people came in to Chocolate World. I expect Hershey loves it when a brief storm moves in – some serious money gets spent.

Since the weather was bad and the car was far away, we got tickets to “Hershey Unwrapped”, a show where we were supposed to be students learning how to make chocolate. It involved a box of samples. It was silly and fun with two different actors playing a new teacher and an established teacher, and we had a good time. When we got out, it had stopped raining, so we decided to go back to the car.

That was about all we could do. The influx of people coming in for the concert meant that the crosswalks were full of people, so the cars trying to get out couldn’t go much of anywhere. After about ten minutes of waiting in a parking lot and only moving one car length, we parked and went back to walk around a little. We couldn’t get in to the amusement park, but we could watch some of the roller coasters through the fence. We also looked at the baked goods and custom confectionaries in another store, and by then the traffic was moving.

We headed to our hotel in Harrisburg after one false start (the GPS found three “Front Streets” and I guessed wrong on the first try). We got to the hotel at 7:30 pm but were told out room was not ready yet because the hotel was full for a firefighter’s parade on Saturday. Not great, but we had to eat anyway, so we went and got a light supper at an Indian restaurant, returning at a little after 8:30. No one was at the desk, and there was a sign saying they would be back in five minutes. So, we took a stroll along the Susquehanna River, getting back to the hotel about 9:00. We caught the front desk person leaving again, but managed to get into our room. Where the toilet tank didn’t fill correctly without reaching into the tank to mess with things each time. But, we had to live with it since there are no other rooms. I would have hoped for better from a national chain where we were paying $125/night (as a discount!).

So, tomorrow we will see if we can get smoothly headed to Iceland. Today was a fun day, and it was nice to break up what could have been a nine hour drive. It also acted as a good scouting visit should we wish to come back to explore the local chocolatier another time.