i cannot prove there is chocolate in belgium

although the focus of our trip to belgium was squarely on the beer, we did manage to squeeze in a couple chocolate shops right at the end -- you may have heard that priya has a wee bit of a chocolate fancy, no? the best and most famous chocolatier in brussels is pierre marcolini, so that was the top destination on our agenda. i think he's best known for his truffles -- and the ones we've tasted so far have been really good -- but we (especially p) tend to be more interested in straight-up, single origin chocolate, and we haven't sampled any of that to report on yet. but the really crazy part was his shop! i guess it's supposed to be as high-end as you can get, so what would you expect? it felt like walking into an art gallery, or maybe a really sophisticated exclusive restaurant. we had to take an obscure back staircase to get up to the floor where the chocolate bars were -- kinda like going to the vip room. and they wouldn't let me take pictures inside! so all i can show you is the snazzy bag we got.