Hershey for Valentine's

February is a good month not to have a 30th because then we do our monthly celebration on Valentine's Day. What things come to your mind when you think of Valentine's Day? Chocolate, flowers, dinner... well I decided to focus on chocolate this year, so we had a one night getaway up to Hershey, PA. It was supposed to be a surprise, but somehow Leigh always has a clue either because she saw something she wasn't supposed to or I accidentally slip beforehand. We went up on Friday and checked in to the Hershey Hotel and they had chocolate bars for us as we checked in. Then they had this super rich hot chocolate in the lobby - almost too rich to really enjoy it. We went to dinner on the grounds at the Harvest, a restaurant that strives to get all of their ingredients within a 100 mile radius. Afterwards we went to the Chocolate Spa to get the "Sweet Feet for Two," a pedicure with chocolate somehow involved. Basically they just put some chocolate paste on your feet in the middle to moisturize, but other than that it was a pretty standard pedicure. Then we went to a chocolate sampler buffet in the Fountain Lobby of the hotel and tried all sorts of chocolate desserts. Leigh's favorite part was the strawberries and the chocolate fountain. In the morning we enjoyed swimming in the indoor pool and the hot tub. Leigh went to the Spa again for a "Whipped Cocoa Bath," something I had to get for her because it was one of their signature treatments. Don't think hot chocolate, it turned out to be a jacuzzi but instead of bath salts or something, they put in this cocoa powder. I liked the spa experience a lot, it's just one that I can't afford all too often. Once we checked out we went and saw some standard Hershey attractions, like Chocolate World and the Hershey Story Museum. At Chocolate World I got selected to do a taste test for Hershey's new raspberry hug, which was ok. From the chocolate and the museum, we realized (we kind of already knew), that Hershey's isn't world-class chocolate but it's claim to fame is being the first mass-produced chocolate that made it affordable to most people. Before Hershey, it was only a delicacy of the rich. So I am grateful for Milton Hershey's ingenuity. Yet we couldn't help but thing maybe he got the ball rolling on this whole obesity epidemic in America... (his first chocolate bar wrapper advertised it as a nutritious snack)