Cadbury World and More Paintings

If you are an American and you hear the phrase, "The World of Chocolate," you probably think of Hershey Park in Pennsylvania. If you are British you probable think, "Cadbury World."

This attraction dedicated to chocolate is located in Bournville, outside of Birmingham. We took the long scenic route from the train station around a large brick building that turned out to be the factory. Despite being a relatively sunny day, there was barely anyone around. On the ten minute walk we probably saw about four people walking and passed a children's football (soccer) game.

I guess most of the people were just already inside the factory, as the lobby was full of families with young children. Some where buying sugary sweets from the gift shop while others waited for their tour time to be called. The lobby was decorated in shades of purple and grey. The employees wore button-down shirts with stripes of violet, lilac, and lavender which I thought looked very nice.

The first part of the tour took us through decorated rooms showing the history of chocolate and the Cadbury family. The first room was decorated like a jungle with trees, rocks, and even a small pool to resemble South America during the arrival of Cortez. Cacao was an important part of Aztec religion and daily life.

From there we moved throughout the centuries as chocolate was introduced to the Spanish monarchs and eventually became a delicacy of the aristocracy. In the early 1800s, John Cadbury began to sell drinking chocolate along with tea and coffee in his shop in Birmingham, England. His business grew and in 1861 his two sons, Richard and George, decided to establish a factory in a stretch of farmland outside of Birmingham. This land was named Bournville and the Cadbury brothers built a village around the factory to house their employees. There were cottages, bath houses, a church and recreation fields for both men and women.

Next up was a winding path through the actual factory. The factory was not in operation that day which  made looking at all of the equipment a little boring. Though, we did get another candy bar and a small cup of melted chocolate on the walk. The melted chocolate was smooth and very rich. It probably took me ten minutes to finish the little thing, but that is just because I like to savor sweets.

After buying a few treats in the gift shop we headed outside and around the factory building, past a massive playground with swings, twisty slides, and more, to the Essence of Cadbury. A small group crowded into a room and watched a humorous dramatization of how Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate was discovered. It definitely was not historically accurate. The real reason people went to it was to get more melted chocolate afterwards. This time you got about 1/8 of a cup of chocolate and one topping like marshmallows or shortbread crumbles. We sat outside in the sun, but none of us managed to eat that much chocolate even though we wanted to eat it all.

The factory was in a very large building, but it still didn't seem large enough to produce the amount of chocolate I feel like they must have too. I am not positive, but I think the factory in Bournville is the only one to produce Cadbury chocolates for Europe (Hershey's produces Cadbury branded chocolate in the United States).

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At this pointed it was only early afternoon so we took the train back into Birmingham for dinner. Since there was about 45 minutes until closing time, we hurried to the Birmingham Museum since it was not a far walk from the rail station. I knew nothing about what the museum was about. I just wrote down the directions in case we needed something extra to do.

It ended up being a great decision because the new exhibition was titled, "Love and Death: Victorian Paintings from Tate," which turned out to feature mostly Pre-Raphaelite artists. The main attraction was "The Lady of Shalott" by John William Waterhouse. The painting is probably one of England's most famous, and it is by my favorite artist.

"The Lady of Shalott" is a very large painting, five feet tall and six and a half feet wide. I never imagined that it was so large. It is strange to be standing in front of something real after seeing so many picture of it. Seeing famous paintings in person probably would have a greater effect of me than seeing a celebrity in person.

The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse

The gallery also exhibited a John William Waterhouse painting that I had never seen before, titled, "St. Eulalia." It is not one of the paintings that normally come up when you search the internet for Waterhouse's paintings. It is different than most of his other ones in that it depicts a more religious scene as he normally deals with characters from the tales of King Arthurs and Mediterranean mythology.

The painting shows the body Eulalia, a young Christian girl who was tortured and killed by the Roman rulers for her faith. When she died, it is said that a white dove flew from her mouth, often seen as a symbol of her soul, and it began to snow, the whiteness covering her naked body.

St. Eulalia by John William Waterhouse

All of the paintings were beautiful and pleasing to my personal aesthetic. It was really difficult to try to absorb all of the details while still rushing to see everything before the museum closed. It turned out to be a great day full of sunny weather, sweet treats, and beautiful art.