One of the best things about childhood are the holidays. The fun, the excitement and best of all – the treats! As a Mum, I do enjoy seeing my kids light up with joy over holiday fun, and treats. I love making the magic happen for them. But… since I’m the Mum, Santa isn’t filling my stocking with surprises and the Easter Bunny seems to have forsaken me.
Now Mums – here’s our chance! At #MumsNight, Monday April 2nd – we’ll be connecting on Twitter to dish about the upcoming Easter Holiday learn more about chocolate, share our favorite chocolate indulgences – and 3 lucky Twitter Party attendees will win their very own Artisan Du Chocolat Easter chocolates. Best of all they are all for you! No sharing with the kids – let them get their own chocolate – this one’s for Mums only!
Each of the three winners will receive an “Eggsplosion” Chocolate Egg. The description on the Artisan du Chocolat website says:
“Nothing beats a nostalgic chocolate blast from the past! Our adored milk chocolate UFO discs coated in popping candy (a popular childhood treat that pops in your mouth) have been transformed into Easter eggs to give an eggstraterrestrial surprise when savoured slowly!”
You can enter daily for more chances to win!
Required Steps: Click on the Rafflecopter prize registration below – it will ask you to follow the Twitter accounts of @TransatlantiMom and @ArtisanChocolat
If you’d like more chances to win – you can return daily to Tweet an update about the Twitter party – for which you’ll be given additional prize entries. This giveaway is open to UK Residents 18+.
*I have not been paid or compensated in by any brand for this post or giveaway. Any questions please ask – or feel free to visit my disclosure statement.
Full Giveaway Rules
Prize Eligibility Only persons residing in United Kingdom who are at least 18 years of age can enter.
Sweepstakes Starts March 28, 2012 @ 06:30 am (BST)
Sweepstakes Ends April 2, 2012 @ 09:00 pm (BST)
- Only those over 18, who reside in the UK may enter.
- Entrants must be over the age of 18
- Entrants must be based within the UK
- 3 winners will each win a prize
- Entrants must follow @TransatlantiMom on Twitter to qualify for entry.
- Entrants must follow @ArtisanChocolat on Twitter to qualify for entry.
- Entrants must either follow @TransatlantiMom to participate in the #MumsNight Twitter party.
- Entrants must also attend the #MumsNight Twitter Party on Twitter April 2, 8:30-9:30 BST to qualify
- TransatlantiMom will not share your data with 3rd Party companies with the exception of Artisan du Chocolat who will use the information you provide for the purposes of communicating with the winners and sharing info about chocolate. You can unsubscribe to emails at any time.
- This competition is run separately from Twitter and is by no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Twitter.
Entrants can enter the Sweepstakes for free by emailing transatlanticmom @ gmail (dot) com and requesting details about alternate registration.
On a recent ski trip to Switzerland, we realized we had 10+ hrs between hotel checkout and needing to be at the airport for our flight. So upon suggestion from our hotel we decided to stop at the Callier chocolate factory in Broq, just outside of Gruyere.
It being a Sunday we were a little concerned that they might not be giving tours, but as we approached the building we could see a steady stream of people parking and approaching the building for tours as well.
You sign up for the tours (free for kids, roughly about 7 GBP, or 10 USD for adults) which includes a tour in your language as well as a chocolate tasting at the end. The tour starts and ends in the giftshop of course. So while we waited for ours to begin it was everything we could do to keep our kids from diving headfirst into the bins of candy eggs or throwing themselves at the chocolate bar wall like the human fly.
So the tour takes you through the history of chocolate, from the ancient Aztecs, through the Conquistadors and Royal Spanish Courts to the French Revolution and on to the invention of milk chocolate in Switzerland and the founding of Nestle and Cailler.
It’s a delightful tour with special effects and fun for all ages. I think the kid’s favorite part was trying every type of Cailler chocolate.
After Cailler, we headed over to just outside of Gruyere, to La Maison de Gruyere which is a Fromagerie, where they make the delicious Gruyere cheese (you know, the kind that goes on top of French Onion Soup!)
This place is definitely set up for tourists – it has bus parking in the lot and automated phone tours in many different languages. Besides the tour of the Fromagerie they also have an attached restaurant and shop. While it’s interesting to see how the cheese is made now, they also do a presentation outside of how it’s been historically been made by hand in a cauldron over a fire. With your paid admission you also receive a cheese sampling.
It has 3 different age levels and 3 different degrees of saltniness. While my sons preferred the no salt, aged 6 mos,my favorite was the full salt, aged 10 months.
The cheese was delicious and worth the trip alone.
I loved seeing not just how the cheese was made, but how it’s stored and turned regularly. It was also fun to see there used to be a “cheese route” similar to the ancient spice routes – where the cheese would travel by land and see to satiate palates far far away… Who knew?
After visiting the fromagerie, we decided to head up the hill to the medieval village of Gruyeres. We were only able to drive part way up the mountain before we were diverted into a parking area and made to walk up-hill in the snow the rest of the way.
The town itself has been pedestrianized and only has 107 full time inhabitants. It’s absolutely lovely, even in the snow, and wet (watch out for those cobblestones though!) There are plenty of restaurants and shops and the beauty of the village alone makes it worth a visit. The castle has been converted into a museum. On this trip, the boys being 4 and 6 we skipped it – thinking it might not be fully appreciated by them, in favor of taking them to a different museum located in the town. {Queue bad parenting decision here…..}
My husband REALLY wanted to go to the HR Giger Museum. We had picked up a brochure in the fromagerie and he decided we couldn’t leave town without swinging by. I like Giger, I do, but wasn’t thrilled about going but was willing to go along since he was soooo excited about it. I was thinking the images might be a little scary for the guys, I had in mind the aliens from Alien. I hadn’t realized how prominently genitalia are featured in pretty much ALL of the work. So we went into the museum, we paid for ourselves and the kids were free, yay! The boys took in the work and brayed like little donkeys and cackled loudly like hyennas, the sound reverberating through the galleries and up through the 4 floors. Of course they didn’t notice the naughty bits – they were focused on the silly scariness of the aliens, and babies in suitcases etc. Meanwhile my hubby and I realized what were seeing in the context of having the kiddos with us. Plus, every room we went to, I counted mutters and comments in 5+ languages about how inappropriate it was to have kids in this museum. Good times! After several rooms worth of stink-eyes and death-glares and us trying to avert and distract the kids from certain images, my husband was ready to admit defeat and we beat a hasty retreat out of there.
Honestly, it’s a really interesting museum, worth a visit if you like HR Giger, and are leaving the kids at home. But, I think we’re lucky we didn’t get chased down the village street with burning torches and pitchforks.
After we left the Museum we took the boys to get their first tattoos and afterwards, to a bar for shots to celebrate. (ok not really, we got in the car and headed back to the airport – but it felt like that should have been the next logical step given the reactions by the other museum patrons)
Even though we only had a day in this city – it’s definitely a place we’d love to come back to. I’d especially like to see it in summer. If you’re interested in learning more about the area, you can follow this link to the Gruyere tourism website.
