We really did see a lot in New Zealand.  We saw mountains and waterfalls.  We saw goldtowns and giant rocks.  But one of the most memorable parts of our trip, honestly, was Cadbury World.  That’s right.  The people that make the cream eggs have a world in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Even though the sign outside told us we needed to call ahead for reservations, we walked in and gave it a go.  As luck would have it, there were two spots left on the tour leaving 5 minutes later.  Awesomeness!  We paid our $20, unsure if we’d really get that much out of the tour, but slightly giddy from all of the sparkliness and chocolate around us.

The first thing we did was walk through a series of displays – vignettes showing the history of chocolate.  When we entered, we took a couple of cacao beans from a basket and began nibbling.  Krista made a face and handed me hers.  I happily chomped away at the bitter beans, imagining them combined with cream and sugar and spices.

Before we’d seen much of the display we heard an announcement for the tour to gather.  The tour kicked off with a mandatory screening of a safety video/history lesson.  In addition to the video, we all received hairnets – super hot – and plastic bags containing one chocolate bar:  a “Chocolate Fish.”

Once we had our hairnets in place,

our tour guide, dressed in purple overalls, took our cameras, phones, hats and everything else that wasn’t attached to our bodies – except for the baggies.

“You will need these bags once we’re inside,” she told us.  This is a competition.  “Let’s see who can collect the most chocolate by the end of the tour.”

Excuse me, what?  Krista and I looked at each other with our mouths hanging open.  A competition?  For chocolate?

(For those of you who may not know, there are a few things held sacrosanct in the lesbian world.  Softball is up there.  Our pets, which we treat as children, rank as well.  But at the top are two things above all else.  Competition.  And chocolate.)

I honestly didn’t notice that the entire rest of the tour, probably 20 other people, was made up of families and children, until somewhere near the end of the tour.  Krista and I were the only interlopers in this family-friendly scenario.  And we had just been baited beyond belief by our tour guide.

She led us through the actual, working factory, stopping every so often to show us another video and tell us about what we were seeing.  “That palate there is one ton of chocolate heading to commercial customers.”  “Those pipes overhead are carrying chocolate.  Red is dark, blue is white, yellow is milk.”  “We keep our chocolate in liquid form in the factory.”  “You should never refrigerate chocolate.”

Then she would put her hands in her pockets full of little chocolate bars, and start quizzing us.  “What color pipe carries the dark chocolate?”  “What other industries use cocoa butter?” “Where does our sugar come from?”

I’m unsure if I physically blocked any children from receiving chocolate, but I do know that parents began participating in the little trivia sessions.  Parents, who will usually prod their children forward, whispering answers in their ears, began yelling out answers trying to beat Krista and me to the chocolate.  And I had planned to hold back.  I really had.  But the words of our tour guide rang in my ears, “it’s a competition…it’s a competition…it’s a competition…for chocolate.”

“Red! Cosmetics! Queensland!”

Some of the rooms had displays of different products.  Cadbury sells all over the world, and most of the products in New Zealand and Australia are things I’d never seen in America.  So I’d rush over to the products, studying the packaging, the flavors, and the colors.  Soon, I was beating the native kiwis to the answers before the questions were finished.

At a certain point, the tour guide clearly had enough of me.  Pretending that she couldn’t hear my voice, she’d ignore my answers, which were obviously first, favoring anybody else.  So, I had to resort to trickery.  Sometimes, I’d stand to her side, just out of her vision, so that she’d hand over the little bars of approval before she saw it was me.  Other times, Krista would tag-team, hearing my answer and bouncing it forward to collect the chocolate.

Eventually our guide resorted to “kids only” questions.  Which worked for Krista and me, but not so well for the dads, who were now totally worked up and in full competition mode.

Here’s another thing about lesbians:  we’re usually pretty good about rules.  We want to know them so we can decide what to do with them.  And I generally obey rules.  So I backed off.  But I knew all the answers.  Sometimes I’d whisper them to the kids so they could beat their parents, who were unable to control themselves now that they were competing, too.

And, as if the chocolate and trivia weren’t enough, the tour itself was really great.  We saw a lot of the process.  We saw white chocolate being squirted out into chips, and huge milk chocolate ingots being removed from molds.   We climbed into a pitch-black silo, and watched as a floodlight illuminated a 1-ton milk chocolate “waterfall” spilling out before us.  And, at the end of it all, we piled into a little, warm room to receive shot glasses of molten chocolate fresh out of the pipes.

And then, we counted.  “Who has the most?” our tour guide asked, scanning all of our bags.  “Oh, well, you.  You have a lot.” She said, pointing at my bag.  “And you,” she said pointing at Krista.  We grinned and clutched our prizes.  When she reached the kids, she dug her hands into the depths of her overalls and emerged with handfuls of shiny treats for all of them.  Like a grandmother making sure everyone had the same number of m&ms, she evened out the bags of chocolate and sent us on our way to take pictures in the old-fashioned Cadbury milk truck.

Back in our van, Krista and I dumped our bags onto the dash to evaluate our haul.  It was kind of like Halloween for adults.

We ended up with a lot of chocolate.  Which we immediately began bartering.  It was a beautiful thing.  She didn’t want the marshmallow, I didn’t want the gluten.  In the two-hour tour, we had collected enough chocolate to take us through the last week of our trip.  And we won.  It was hard to say which was better.

This post has been entered into the Grantourismo and HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition.

The sea stirs me.  As a child I heard stories from the mouth of my grandfather.  Of the beauty of the sea.  Of swimming in the open ocean, and deep-sea diving.  He was a Navy man.  Part of a submarine rescue crew.   The sea meant adventure, danger, death.  For him, a man who had seen and survived the attack on Pearl Harbor, it also somehow meant peace.

***

My trips to Italy have been beautiful, discovery-filled experiences.  Great stretches of self-reflection punctuated by moments with new friends.  During a stay in the beautiful city of Lucca, a new friend suggested that we drive to Viareggio, a coastal city frequented by VIPs. This cloudy, off-season day, it had the feel of Coney Island in the movie “Big.” Many shops were closed, the beach vacant, and even the dark-skinned vendors that usually harass passers-by with their counterfeit goods seemed unconcerned with us, busy contemplating the vast, empty beauty of this place.

We made our way to the harbor and walked along the great jetty that extends from the city out into the water.  Fishing boats lined the way, their masts standing tall against the grey backdrop and giving rise to a stark picture.

The Madonna stood atop a pedestal in the harbor, high above all, eternally blessing those who venture out, welcoming those who return.

I took a moment to think of my Grandfather.  A man who had returned.

Yes.  The sea stirs me.

Reason I ask….no matter how much I try to be nice, I just view other women as enemies that must be dominated, belittled and outdone in all circumstances.  And I never put anything past other women when it comes to my husband.  Do gay women have to deal with competition from men?  So curious if this is even an issue, or if by definition gay women are completely immune to their charms.

With most questions about gay relationships, I find myself answering that the experience is much the same as straight relationships.  Yes, we bicker about money.  Yes, we like to hold each other and watch tv.  Yes, we get nervous when we meet the in-laws.  But this question has had me thinking for a couple of weeks about how different the experience of being a woman dating women is.

NOTE: As always, I’m answering this question from my personal perspective.  I’m not speaking for all of the gays – just one of the gays.  And this is something I’ve had experience with lately.

Dating. First of all, it seems to be a common issue for women who are dating women to be unclear whether and who they are actually dating.  Is a coffee date a date date, or just coffee? If you’re not kissing, but want to be, is that a date?  What if you haven’t communicated that desire to the other person?  Date?  For two single women to go out to coffee, or even dinner and a movie, isn’t necessarily a date.  For two single lesbians, however, it can be unclear.  Seriously unclear.

Maybe it’s the same for straight people, I’m not sure.  But I’m learning that, in order to make sure everyone is on the same page, it’s a good idea to be very clear up front about whether you are on a date, or hanging out as friends.

Men. As for men as competition, the women that I date or am interested in dating are lesbians.  Which means that, by and large, they aren’t attracted to men.  So, when it comes to seeing men as competition, no, I don’t see them that way.

However…

Competition. And this is where it gets interesting – I can see a lesbian as either a potential date, or as potential competition.  The same woman.  Which brings me back to the issue of knowing whether you are dating someone.  Because, if you are interacting with a woman based on an assumption that she’s a potential date, and it turns out she’s actually competition, it can seriously change the dynamic.  A woman can be one moment someone I might be on a date with, and the next moment someone who is dating someone I’d like to be dating.  It’s even possible that she can be both – at the same time.  Which makes my head and heart explode a little.

For example:  Recently, I found myself in separate, undefined dating-type situations with a couple of fantastic women.  We’d meet for coffee, or bike to pie, or just hang out and watch tv.  A couple of times a week.  I liked them both, found them attractive, and enjoyed spending time with each of them.  They knew that I was spending time with other women, and I knew the same about them.  I saw each of them as potential dates, and interacted with them as though I might like to date them.  But, as we started to define what it was we were doing (whether it was actually dating), we discovered that the three of us were, in fact, dating each other.  Yikes.  Unexpected.  Very quickly, I found that my interactions and feelings about these lovely women shifted and twisted.  I saw one of them as a date and one of them as competition.

And yes, I realize that seeing women as either quarry or competition is seriously limiting, but I think it’s something interesting to consider, nonetheless.  Especially given my reaction.  Yes, it’s time for me to examine the way I view women.  But it also illustrates a dynamic that I hadn’t noticed before.

And I think it’s very different from straight relationships.

So the short answer is, no, I don’t see men as competition.  I kind of think that would be easier.  Right now I feel like every coffee is a scene out of James Bond where I’m trying to figure out whether the beautiful woman across the table from me is a foreign agent about to trade my secrets for a chance at a new life.