The continent at last!

Whew we're on the continent at last! But let me back up a bit. On Monday morning after leaving London we drove to Dover and looked at one of the oldest castle in Europe. It was begun in the Iron Age. At first it was simple and over the years different kings added more and more parts. The castle has been in use as a military base until 1942 when it became a museum. Unfortunately we couldn't spend much time there because we had a train deadline to meet.

We drove onto a train, the Eurotunnel, and zipped under the English channel, in 40 minutes we were in France. We drove through France and stopped at Belgium in the city Brugge.

One funny thing in England, on Saturday night we gained an hour for the English Daylight Savings Time ending but on the continent they are in a different time zone, so we lost that hour back.

Tuesday we walked to a lace museum and demonstration in Old Brugge. It was fascinating watching the ladies weaving tiny threads into intricate woven and lacy patterns.

Next we walked to The Choco-Story, a chocolate history museum and chocolate candy making demonstration. The museum showed the history of how people in South America watched monkeys take the cacao fruit and break it open and drink the sap and spit out the seeds. The people tried it and found they liked it. They too spit out the bitter seeds. As the seeds decomposed, people noticed they gave off a good smell. Soon it was discovered how to make chocolate to drink. The Spanish came and found this drink and brought it back to Spain. Some Spanish nuns added sugar and everyone liked that better. The chocolate drink was becoming popular, soon an English man invented the chocolate bar by adding cacao butter which turned hard when cooled. The demonstration showed how they put filling into the chocolate.

We went home tired.