Our first full day in the Netherlands! We started today off with a canal cruise, which gave us a tour of the inner city from a new perspective than yesterday. We learned about the history behind the gorgeous architecture we’ve been seeing and also gained an understanding of what kinds of people and businesses are able to operate there today. We also got to see the houseboats close-up!

We visited the Netherlands’ largest library for coffee and pastries afterwards. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures there, but we sat on a balcony overlooking the canal and the skyline.

Later, we moved on to our first site visit, Cacao and Spice! This chocolate company is run by a Dutch couple and focused on sustainable production. The woman who founded it welcomed us into their store and informed us of the benefits of producing chocolate sustainably.

The taste of a cacao bean is significantly influenced by the environment that it grows in and what grows around it. When cacao is produced in a monoculture, as it most commonly is, it loses a lot of the flavor that it should have. If it is grown naturally with other varieties of plants around it, the cacao has much more flavor, so it really is best to grow it sustainably. Furthermore, we learned about the importance of using the entire cacao fruit, not just the cacao beans, which make up a very small percentage of the fruit as a whole. For example, white chocolate is made from cacao butter, which is a byproduct of dark chocolate. But Cacao and Spice utilizes even more of the cacao plant: they sell juice made from it and use the fruit’s skin as an ingredient in the material of their shop’s flooring! This site visit provided a lot of insight into the world of sustainable chocolate making and sustainable business in general. We also got to try lots of really delicious chocolates!

After the company visit, we finished the day with dinner and some shopping! I also got a macaron with gelato in the filling, which was a surprise but still good. Stay tuned for tulips tomorrow!