Chocolate and Beyond

The Chocolate Boutique Hotel

How yummy does the The Chocolate Boutique Hotel look? It has chocolately themed rooms, a diary of chocolate-related events including chocolate-making workshops, and chocolate is provided daily in the bedrooms to chocoholic guests!

The hotel is in Bournemouth, so it's a bit of way from me to travel but I'm hoping I'll get to review it at some point. Maybe for The Travel Editor which I do a lot of writing for? Who knows?

Watch this space just in case!

On being vegetarian again...

I thought it was time for an update since I last wrote about my move to give up dairy (which hasn't been entirely successful, I'm afraid, although a lot of my diet has changed).

I cannot remember if I'd written anything about the fact that I've stopped eating meat again, which I have chosen to do after seeing the Conklin Farms footage, I'd been a non-meat eater for 21 years previously, and had a three year 'lapse' in a bid to follow a more natural diet.

Since truly ethical choices are so thin on the ground, as well as the fact that the meat industry also contributes to three times more carbon output than the travel industry, I've decided I don't want meat as part of my own diet. Regardless of it being part of a natural diet, I just can't bear the cruelty involved.

As much as is possible, I want to avoid buying into cruelty, which the meat industry is riddled with. So that leaves me with the option of not eating meat at all.

With regards to dairy - well, I now only buy soya milk at home and mostly only dairy-free margarine. Since I drink a lot of white tea and coffee, this change has substantially cut down my dairy use and obviously means I'm buying into the dairy industry far less than I used to.

However, I haven't managed to give all dairy up. I still occasionally buy and eat cheese (though it is a lot less than I used to) and also I do buy and eat chocolate. When I'm outside my home, I make more dairy free choices than I used to, but I don't make a fuss about it.

I suppose this my comfort level at the moment. I'm doing 'my bit' and this is where it's at. Part of me would love to be vegan but I don't think this is realistic for me - I'm sure I'd always be 'cheating' and then what's the point?