Liena_V
I attended the guided tour with what they call a "master class". Our group was no more than 10 people, all adults and the programme promised to teach us about the history of chocolate and cocoa, the process of making it and a "masterclass" where we would be shown how to make chocolates and do some tasting.I love chocolate, and I like Pure Food truffles so I was optimistic, and even the smell from the open toilet door next to where we were told to wait for the guide and the other attendees ruined it.What ruined it was the boring, rushed and uninformative tour (we were later told the guide was new so maybe that the reason) - we were rushed through the various rooms that mostly contained big pictures with some text in Latvian, English and Russian that the guide quickly summarised. The tour didn't last more than 15 minutes and I think we would have learned more if we had been left to wonder around and read everything properly. This of course is another flaw of the "museum" - there wasn't much in he way of expositions and things to look at, most of it was just information written on the walls (albeit with big supporting paintings in the background and looking quite nice) that you could just google and save yourself the time and the money...I still wan't too disappointed until we got to the "master class" that I had been very much looking forward to. The chocolate tasting that was advertised was just sampling the plain dark, milk and white chocolate drops that they use in production before adding things and making their yummy chocolates that I hoped we would be tasting. When it came to actually making the chocolates, it just consisted of the one third of the group filling some trays for the praline shells, the instructor putting them in the fridge and taking out some shells that had been made earlier and already set, then the 2nd third filling them (no one told us what the filling was by the way, i assume it was the praline cream they referred to on the website) and the rest sealing them with chocolate. These then went back in the fridge and the ones we got to rase were chocolates made by the previous group! They have completely missed the point - I don't think I was the only one there that wanted to attend the "master class" to make chocolates from beginning to end and then eat what I had made! In addition to this, they didn't share any recipes or anything of the kind that I also expected from an attraction that calls itself "master class". What annoyed me the most though was the tour guide and the instructor being patronising and talking to all of us adults like a group of children, making us say "magic words", counting and clapping our hands while she was swapping what we had made with the chocolates made later and talking some nonsense about magic fridges. May be entertaining for kids below 10, but not for adults. The best part of the whole place and the most worth visiting is the shop, which is free and you get what you expect.
