When I went
to Michigan to visit some acquaintances last summer, they took me to a place
called Mackinac Island. It is located in the northwestern part of lake Huron,
almost on the edge to lake Michigan.
What really
impressed me about this place were its peculiarities, starting with the pronunciation
of “Mackinac”. Most people
are tempted to pronounce it with a hard “k” at the end making it sound like
this: Mack-i-knack. However, I learned that the correct way to pronounce it is “Mackinaw“. All
this confusion was caused by the French conquerors, who tried to pick up on
words spoken by the local people and write them down in their own language.
Another
remarkable fact about this island is that there are no motorized vehicles allowed
on it. Therefore, all the traffic consists of bikes and horses. When a tree is
cut, for example, the remains will be carried away by horse-drawn vehicles.
You can
also take a tour around the Island on horse-drawn caravans. They will take you
to magic places like Arch Rock where I took this wonderful picture.
Apart from all those experiences, my absolute favorite place on the island was (as I like to call it) “chocolate paradise”. It was actually a fudge store called “Murdick’s” on the main street of Mackinac Island. Up to that point I haven’t known fudge and therefore was barely impressed when I was told that Mackinac Island is famous for it. My opinion changed, when I entered Murdick’s. Oh, and by the way I'm not trying to promote Murdick's, there are many fudge stores lined up on the main street, but this was the one I happened to enter.
The air
was filled with the sweet, mouth-watering smell of chocolate and on my left at
the counter several different types of delicious, chocolaty fudge bars were
displayed. On the right, even more impressive, the chocolatiers were working on
their new creations and all the customers in the shop could watch them. I
haven’t seen anything similar before. They poured the batter on a table and
started to… well I can’t really explain this so I’d like to show you a video to
get a better imagination of the process:
After
working on the chocolate mixture for some minutes, creamy fudge bars slowly started
to form. They were sliced into hand-sized pieces. Finally, all the spectators
were given small squares of fudge to try. It was simply delicate. For me, being
a chocolate addict, it was one of the best experiences ever.
I wish you sweet Easter holidays !!
