#67. Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate at Hotel Chocolat

Hello lovelies, Happy Valentine's Day!

I have always loved having a wander around Hotel Chocolat. Sadly as the name suggests its not a hotel made of chocolate but a wonderful shop with so many gorgeous types of chocs, I just want to eat them all - yum! Oh no, that makes me sound like Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory doesn't it?!? I just have a sweet tooth, ok.

So I was really excited when I seen a members event on Yelp Edinburgh last week to go along for a chocolate tasting, to sample some of their hot drinks and to try some of their beauty products. As you can guess, I was at the front of the chocolate tasting queue! Give me some free chocolate and I'm there!

The Edinburgh shop is on Fredrick Street, so right in the centre of town, so me and Juliet went along after work. We met some other lovely Yelpers, tried lots of different kinds of chocolate (the one pictured at the top was my favourite - lemon white chocolate with a berry jammy filling, so tasty and didn't shy away from the lemon either which is great as I love a lemon desert...lemon meringue pie, lemon drizzle... you get the picture. This really is a foodie post isn't it?!?) and if we weren't already chocolated out by then I got to try some hot choc too - the gingerbread one was immense!

I also got a complimentary hand massage using some of the Hotel Chocolat products. I had never used any of them before and if I'm honest had never actually heard of them - I don't associate the brand with beauty products but after my quick sample I am a fan. 

The hand creme was lovely, so rich and absorbed into your skin really quickly without being too greasy (I hate that) and my hands felt so lovely and soft afterwards. I was also quite surprised that the smell was quite neutral, not overpowering and a lot more floral than I expected - I was imagining a really strong coco/sickly sweet smell as though you had just rubbed bars and bars of chocolate on your skin! That really would just be a sticky mess! These will definitely be some products that I will look out for, to try in the future. They also had a lovely big candle which smelt amazing...I am in the market for a new one for the living room so on pay day I might just pop in.

And for those who don't quite fancy their beauty range, as you can imagine there are chocolates to suit every taste (a whole wall full in fact...imagine that a whole wall of chocolate! If you are fed up imagining then the second picture should give you the gist -wow!) Quite a lot of the chocolates are in wee packets of 6 which is a great way to try lots of different flavours without committing to a whole box. They are a wee bit pricier than your regular boxes of chocs but I think they are perfect if you want to try something a bit different.

The chocolates are all split up into sections by their flavours, e.g. fruity, deserts and boozy. I spent ages trying to chose which packet to buy to take home (I mean, it would have been rude not to!) and spent ages withering between Billionarie's Shortbread and Eton Mess (oooo!) but eventually settled on the Mojito flavour. I like a mojito cocktail now and again, so refreshing and these were great...very strong and rumy, you felt like you just had a large gulp of cocktail but were so tasty and a definite for mojito fans. I would never have thought of putting white chocolate and mojito flavours together but it worked so well. I have already been back to get a second packet for when Robin's family were up visiting. These are now definitely a firm favourite!

Have you ever been into Hotel Chocolat before? What's your favourite chocolate from them? Have you tried their beauty products before?