10.18.05
This is not a picture of me
EuroChocolate has begun here in Perugia (website in English and Italian). It’s 9 full days devoted to chocolate in all forms. We’ve seen hot pepper chocolate, cinnamon chocolate, cannabis chocolate (!), chocolate in all shapes, and even 3 meter X 3 meter blocks of chocolate that were carved by professional sculptors. Ladies are getting their hair styled with chocolate, getting chocolate body masks, and apparently (according to this picture) shaving with it.
The city is packed like we’ve never seen it. We’ve heard estimates that 300,000 people were in the city center on Sunday. Perugia’s normal population is around 100,000, so things are pretty crowded. But it’s fun to see so many people in one place. We also heard that one of the side streets off of the city center was so full of people at one point that everyone was completely stuck. Not my idea of a good time!