When I was a child I had the impression that the best chocolate came from Switzerland. I’m not sure where this came from, marketing perhaps, it is true though that the Swiss make excellent chocolate.

They are not alone of course. Canada has a few renowned chocolatiers, or at least they have a national reputation, though maybe not an international one. I was going to mention a couple of names, but they don’t need the free advertising. When we visited Cote d’Ivoire I had the chance to sample Ivorian chocolate, which was both tasty and inexpensive. You don’t hear much about that – they don’t have the same marketing budget as the Europeans I guess. But it seems to be Belgium that is considered to be the Mecca for chocolate lovers. And if you are in Belgium and looking for chocolate, the places to go is Bruges.

I suppose you can look up the history for that if you want, I just took it as a given. I didn’t go to Bruges for the chocolate, I went because my wife said we should go there. Something about the canals, about the town as kind of a Belgian version of Venice.

Maybe it is. I’ve never been to Venice so I really have no comparison. Bruges is a nice places to visit though, peaceful and restful, even with a large tourist population. And there are a lot of places to buy chocolate.

Of course before going to any place like Bruges you do your research beforehand, both online and printed tour guides. When we were last there (2009) the consensus seemed to be that a shop called The Chocolate Line was the best in the world. For me that made it a must see. After all, how often do you get to see (and taste) the world’s best anything?

Being the world’s best comes with a steep price tag. The store was very busy and people were buying a lot of chocolate. I have no idea how many different items there were, hundreds, probably thousands. I wasn’t really tempted though.

The prices were a little scary, although I will admit you have to expect to pay for quality, and the stuff did have that “world’s best” reputation. My problem was that I am a purist, or maybe just too picky an eater. I like chocolate, but don’t make it fancy. Simple milk or dark chocolate by itself is enough for me. Add other flavours or textures and you have lost me. Fortunately, that desire for chocolate simplicity stood me in good stead. I knew I had to buy something, just so I could say I have eaten the best chocolate in the world. I settled for a small simple bar of dark chocolate, just a couple of bites really, which was pretty much the cheapest thing in the store. It cost me the equivalent of five dollars, about five times what I would normally pay for such a snack.

The verdict? It was good, though I don’t know if I would call it the best in the world. I’m not enough of a chocolate connoisseur I guess. We did wind up buying a lot of chocolate while we were in Bruges, but as I remember it, it came from the shop around the corner. Tasted just as good to my untutored taste buds.