Ghirardelli Square Chocolate Festival

I swear, I think all I've been doing lately is EATING!!! lol! I can't help it, I need to indulge myself in someway! With no job and no flow of money, I have to seriously cut back on my shopping habits.  It pains me to restrict myself so from buying new clothes or makeup to play with.  Actually, I honestly don't need anymore clothes or makeup.  Well, maybe more clothes still.. and shoes!! I can never have enough :D

But i like treating myself out to a yummy treat.  I try to keep it to just once a week.  A girl's got to eat, right?? lol  So I don't stop myself from spending on food.  Good food for a good soul!! :)

First off, stupid me, I did not take traffic into consideration.  Wanting to sleep in, I decided to leave San Jose around 12.  Well of course there's lots of lagging, so we didn't leave until 1:30.  We arrived in SF around 2:30, BUT there was so much traffic, and parking was a b**** to find.  We ended up parking at the Ghirardelli parking lot.  It's soo friggen small! It's built so that everything is one-laned, you drive down and around one side all the way to the bottom floor, and then you drive back up and around the other side.  They kind of like put parking lots on every half floor?  I dunno, it's really wierd, and the turns are reallly reallly narrow.  Luckily we found parking at the first floor going back up after hitting bottom.  I'll tell you about my adventure leaving this parking lot later X_X. So anyway, it was about 3 by the time we actually got to the festival.

So, boyfriend and I went to turn in our Living Social coupons.  So normally, it costs $20 to buy a ticket that you can redeem for 15 samples.  The other week, Living Social had a deal where you can two tickets for $10!  Sounded like a great deal and a great date adventure, right?

Well first thing we noticed was ALL THE PEOPLE. The lines for everything were SOOO LONG!!

It's kind of hard to tell how long the lines were in this picture, because I was in line while taking it! lol.  Also, at this point, a few of the booths were closed.  For some reason, I was totally not expecting the long lines, I don't know why.  And for some reason, I thought we would get some baller samples, like I thought I would get like a whole chocolate cupcake or something.  Because I mean, if people were paying $20 for this, it had to be worth it right???  As you will soon see, I was sooooo soooooo wrong :(

Homemade Rocky Road Candy from Project Open Hand

1. This was the first booth I went to, because it had NO LINE!!! But look what one sample was!!  It was pretty small and dinky, and it did not taste like anything extraordinarily special.  It was just chocolate with marshmallows and nuts, hence "rocky road".  I could totally make this on my own -__-

Chocolate Stuffed Marshmallow from GudFud

2.  My second sample from GudFud (pronounced like good food), another short line lol.  It's a better sample size, but I still wasn't blown away or anything.  I was curious because I saw several people carrying boxes of this stuff.  Um.. it's just marshmallow with some chocolate in the center!! I think I've had something like this in the asian supermarkets.  They do have a fruit filled one, but no samples of that!!  But I must admit, it's packaging looks pretty cute! I was drawn in!!

Freeze Dried Fruit from Funky Monkey

3.  This was right next to the GudFud line, and it was pretty short too!  This wasn't too bad, they gave us two bags as 1 sample :)  It's basically freeze dried fruit, there's this Vietnamese snack that's exactly like this, but with more variety and I think some of their fruits are just baked.  Well overall, I liked the banana one a lot.  I'm not a big fan of freeze dried pineapple, it's just too hard and gets stuck to your teeth when you try to eat it.  OH! But I was definately able to taste the extra guava flavoring they put in there!

Petite Brownies from Sugar Bowl Bakery

My boyfriend marked these off his card.  He got three brownies for two marks :)  They had madelines earlier in the day, but I'm fine with brownies :)

Sea Salt Fudge Brownies from Delise Dessert Cafe

4,5,6,7.  I wish I got into this line a lot sooner!!  This was the longest line I saw upon entering the festival.  I should've stood in line right then, but I wanted to browse around :P  I saw that they were giving out little mini cupcakes!!!! So I stood in line, the lady behind told us that it was her second time and the brownies were to die for.  She also told us to get some chocolate vodka, but they ran out by the time Richard got there :(  Anyway, they ran out of cupcakes when I finally got to the front of the line :(  So I settled for 4 pieces of brownie.  At that point, it was already 4 and the festival closes at 5, and we wanted to use up our cards!! lol
The lady was right, these brownies were realllly good.  Really moist and chewy, more like fudge than brownies, and you can also taste the salt, very slightly though!!  I just wish the pieces were bigger!!!

Chocolate Martinis from Leonidas Fresh Belgian Chocolate

8. I met up with my good friend Ali and her boyfriend right after the brownies.  They were in line for the chocolate martinis.  Sounds cool right?  Well they gave us each a plastic martini cup, and they filled it up just so it's barely past the fluted part.  I forgot to take an actual picture of the drink, but here it is cropped out of our picture lol.  anyway... THIS DRINK WAS NASTY!!!!!!! OMG, it just taste like medicine, the bitter kind!!!! I think all the chocolate sweetness was caught in that fluted part of the cup, and we just got a big dose of vodka X_X

Oh, there were giving out pieces of bagels right next to the martinis, and the guy didn't mark our cards! Awesome! free sample!! They were chocolate cranberry bagels, and there were realllly good, but it might've been because they were toasted and buttery and warm :)

9, 10. I picked up two pieces of biscotti for me and the bf from somewhere, iunno it was just in front of us. Forgot to take a pic, but it was nothing special.  It was small, and melted, and lumpy lol.

Traditional Toffee & Sweet and Salty Toffee from Goodytwos Toffee Company

11, 12, 13, 14.  Trying to use up my card, I got myself some toffee.  Yes, each cup holds two samples of toffee X_X  and.. they taste the same to me!! lol.  I'm fine by that though, I love toffee!! I remember eating a tin of See's toffeettes when I was little.. and then getting in trouble for eating the whole thing and not sharing with anyone LOL!!

Pistachio Caramel Corn & Spiced Almond Caramel Corn from CCMade

While I was in line for toffee, bf was in line for popcorn.  They were pretty yummy! Better than your average caramel popcorn! But I couldn't tell the different between the two!!  They were both caramelly with  a spicy after taste.

Chocolate Covered Oreos from Plumeria Flours

15.  Our last sample of the day!!  We got into this line, because it was next to the popcorn line, LOL.  And after we stood in line, one of the workers from the booth came up to us and told us not to let anyone else stand in line behind us because they're going to close and not give anyone else samples.  So, I thought SCORE! Last sample!! But it was ehh.... Getting people to not get in line behind us was HARD, I would tell them, and then they would say that they'll just try.  The lady came back to tell people twice, and twice people were angry and then they walked away.  The third time a security guard looking fellow stood behind us, but he wouldn't really tell everyone that the line was closed.  He'd would tell the group directly behind us that it's closed, and then they walk away and the line moves up, but he doesn't update them.  This one woman was so mad because she stood there for like 5 minutes before he even said anything!!! In the end, they couldn't stop the people from coming.  I dunno why, they still had plenty of samples left!! And speaking of the samples....

OMG, look got DINKY that is.  They basically took a cookie and cut it to like 16 pieces, we were getting CRUMBS!! X_X  Costco gives better samples than this!!! And it wasn't that great either :P

Oh! I forgot about parking.  First off, I paid $15.75 to park X_X craziness.  It's because it costs $2.25 per 20 mins.  It's actually not too bad, considering that other garages charge $3 something elsewhere, and the Fairmont's garages charges $5 per 20 minutes.  Crazy!!! And if finding parking was a b****, getting out of the parking lot was b****er!! X_X So I told you were were on the second to bottom floor right?  Well we had to go all the way back up, since the normal exit exited to where the festival was taking place.  So we had to go all the way back up.  But remember how I told you the entire parking garage was one laned?  So when we got up two floors, the parking attendants stopped us.  The parking traffic was clearly backed up.  But they held us for like 20 minutes, and the entire time we were trying to figure out why! Well it turns out that they were letting cars come in to park!!! Ugh.. So, I left the festival around 5:45, and I didn't get home until almost 8 X_X  *sigh* what a CRAZY day!!!

Well, the day wasn't a complete lost!!  The weather was surprisingly absolutely beautiful in SF!! I got to spend a lovely day with the boyfriend and double date with my good friend :)