May 30th (Wed)

We got up twice this morning. First around 5:10am to catch the sunrise over Lake Champlain, and the second time when Marc went for his run (Shu Wen slept in until 9am!) The sunrise was quite beautiful, and it was amazing how bright it was a little after 5am. We were blurry eyed at first, but managed to take a few good pictures.

After taking showers and having a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs with green peppers and bread we headed into Burlington. The first thing we noticed about Burlington was its smell. We were confused as to why a state like Vermont which is all about the environment has one of its bigger cities smell so bad.

After exploring downtown for a little bit, we grabbed lunch at an organic grocery place and some amazing Mediterranean Olive bread at the Great Harvest Bread Co. then headed to the Lake Champlain Chocolate factory. There we were given a well rehearsed presentation about chocolates (from plant to pod to pellets to pricey truffles). It was quite amazing to us that so much chocolate is made in such a small factory. Some of the machinery were rather impressive (such as the magnetic tumbler which uses centripetal force to make hollow decorative chocolate pieces (such as Easter bunnies and Santa Clauses). We were even given samples. The truffles (LLC’s signature chocolate) really was remarkable, as were the simple 75% dark chocolate from Tanzania, but the caramel ones were just too sweet and had way too much caramel for our tastebuds.

After a short stroll along the waterfront, we headed back downtown to do some exploring of our own. Shuwen checked out a few galleries and goth-hippy basement hand-blown glass pipes and hooka stores. Marc and Mark hung out at a book store. Later that afternoon, we headed to the Magic Hat Brewery. The beer tasting was fun! We could have each gotten 4 oz tastes of each of the 8 types of draught brews they had, but we knew we would be in trouble if we did that. Our favorite was the #9 which was a little apricoty . Since we couldn’t get anything smaller than a 12 pack, we headed to the closest gas station and bought a 6-pack of #9 there. Our camping dinner of Spinach and Cheese Tortellini with Sun-dried tomatoes went down very well with our brew in hand.