Candy = Yum

*
On Saturday, Lee and I made a trip up to Merrillville, as we do most weekends. No real plans to speak of this weekend, just trying to pass the time until baby girl decides to grace us with her presence. The trip was none too exciting. Petsmart, the Home Depot, Babies R Us, and TGI Fridays for lunch. (Seriously, sounds like Will Ferrel in Old School, doesn't it?)

After all of that, I decided I wanted to hit up the Albanese Candy Factory. We always see the signs for it. Plus, in college, Ahow lived with Steve Albanese, so we'd heard about the candy factory many times.

First off, the place is much bigger than I expected. I don't know what I was thinking... I guess you do need quite a bit of space to make lots of candy! The front is a large candy store with windows to see back into the factory part. What we could see of the factory really wasn't that exciting. We saw lots of powdered sugar, and that's about it.

There was so much candy there! And not just stuff made by Albanese. There were lots of "old school" candies that I hadn't seen in years. Like the little wax bottles that you bite open and they contain sugary juice... Classic. Unfortunately, there were also a TON of people there. Agh! I got ran over by a dude at one point. I said to Lee "Apparently he underestimated his size," and Lee said "Or yours." Hmmm. The coolest part of the store was this huge tube that had melted chocolate dripping down it from about 50 feet up. Delicious looking.

With all the crowds, Lee and I grabbed some gummy bears (supposedly their specialty), chocolate covered pretzels, and a ginormous turtle (for Lee) and bailed.

All in all, I'm glad I got to see the place. But, I was quite disappointed in the lack of Oompa Loompa's. The white chocolate pretzels and the gummy bears have both been quite delicious. Although I'm not sure I'm enough of a connoisseur to really say if they have the BEST gummy bears...