I just discoved that next week is going to be awesome. It’s Chocolate Week here in London.

I’ve heard of restaurant week, a pretty common week in cities around the world. All the good restaurants in town have a fixed menu for deal of a price. Chocolate week is a similar deal except there are it’s also loaded up tastings and samplings. Excellent.

When you’re scoping out a big city, make see if there are any weeks like chocolate weeks or restaurant week so that you can get in on the action. I’m sure that you can be somewhere and not know that something was going on, I suppose I even missed Chocolate Week last year. But it’s well worth a little research, as these quiet special events really make a trip that much more special.

In my short stay in Geneva, I decided that despite the incessant rain and grey skies, I could live there.  I began believing this pretty much from the get-go as my flight into Switzerland overlooked the Alps.  The idea became more and more solidified for these top 5 reasons (amongst others):

1.  French!  I can speak the beloved language of French as much I want, and people are nice about it! They actually want to talk to me in French.  This is just glorious news.

2. Instead of a bible in the drawer of my (very swanky and upscale) hotel room is a book on the teachings of Buddha.  This must be an intriguing city.

3. On Thursday, I went to an Irish pub with a Canadian, an Indian, un Francais, a German, a Dane, and an Italian to listen to a Texan woman sing the blues.  Enough said.

4.  It looks like a mini-Paris in which you can literally walk everywhere.  This is good because I am a Washingtonian after all, so the only modes of transportation I know are the public kind and my own 2 feet.  Bonus: whilst walking, you get to stare at the pretty mountains surrounding the city.

5 (and most important).  There are chocolate shops everywhere.  This is every woman’s fantasy.