Valentine’s Day is when thoughts turn to love and chocolate. Across the country, artisan chocolatiers and candy factories alike are gearing up for a sweet holiday, says Kay Harwell Fernandez , creator of the Chocolate Travel app (Sutro Media, $2.99), available on iTunes. “There are hundreds of great chocolate destinations that people can enjoy.” She shares some favorites with Larry Bleiberg for USA TODAY.
This family-run plantation in the Kona region of the Big Island offers a rare chance to see every step of chocolate-making from tree to treat. “You see these huge pods and you see the tiny, tiny bean that’s roasted and ground and made into chocolate,” Fernandez says. “The whole process takes around 30 days.” Visitors love the roasted cacao nibs, made from partially ground beans.
This “bean to bar” chocolatier uses raw cacao to make her luscious candies. “It’s like a fine wine, using the best beans there are,” Fernandez says. She recommends the chocolate-dipped fruit and handcrafted truffles like the Italian Cowboy, made with espresso and bourbon, and the Aztec Aphrodisiac, which has a hint of chile. Other cruise ships offer chocolate buffets, but Fernandez is particularly impressed by the cocoa free-for-all available on many sailings. “Carnival goes all-out. It takes up to 10 pastry chefs on each ship working around the clock to get this buffet together,” she says. Standouts include chocolate wontons and chocolate rum-raisin pudding.
The home of Hershey’s chocolate makes for a sweet visit any time of year, but Fernandez says this month is a standout. The Hotel Hershey does a chocolate and wine pairing and has a huge chocolate dessert buffet, and the Hershey spa recently introduced an edible chocolate facial that will be available year-round. Special chocolate lab classes are offered at the Hershey Story museum.These year-round walking tours show off the sweet side of the Second City, hitting fine chocolate shops, patisseries, bakeries and lounges in the downtown Loop and neighborhoods. The company has launched a cupcake route, and tonight it features its annual chocolate Champagne tour. “It really runs the gamut. They’re very thorough and diverse in what they do,” Fernandez says.Part of the famous Mars candy dynasty, this privately owned factory offers a sweet break from nearby Las Vegas casinos. “It’s a mass-producer, but it has truffles and cream-filled chocolates and caramels,” Fernandez says. She recommends a visit to the adjacent botanical desert garden, which has 350 different plants. “There are benches where you can sit and take it all in and eat your chocolate.” Intervale, N.H.
This festival (Feb. 26 this year) lets you burn off calories between chocolate indulgences by snowshoeing or cross-country skiing among nine host inns and stops. (You also can drive or take a shuttle.) Each break features its own chocolate treat, from chocolate fondue to brownie sundaes, and is about 15 minutes from the next stop. “That’s a very innovative way to do a chocolate festival,” Fernandez says.
French-trained artisan chocolatier Gail Ambrosius travels to Central and South America and beyond seeking sustainably grown cacao beans. Her chocolates are single-source, meaning they include beans from only one area, and they happen to be delicious. “She designs beautiful chocolate, some hand-painted. It’s just gorgeous,” Fernandez says. What could be better than eating Norman Love’s premium chocolate? Learning how to make it yourself, that’s what. This well-known chocolatier offers hands-on classes spring through summer. Fernandez loves the hot sipping chocolate: “This is not your everyday cocoa. It isn’t graded or powdered. It’s made with fresh chocolate.”Fernandez suggests treating the body and senses with a chocolate-sugar body scrub for couples. The treatment uses chocolate-scented oil combined with honey body sugar, which exfoliates and leaves skin soft and smooth. “It’s a very sensory-overload experience. It smells so good,” Fernandez says. And to top it off, she recommends one of the spa’s double-trouble chocolate cookies.

Indianapolis may be the center of the football universe during Sunday’s Super Bowl, but basketball legend Larry Bird says his city has plenty to offer visitors, whatever their game. “We’re a small city but we have it all,” he says. “It’s so compact. You can walk to just about everything.” As a native-born Hoosier, an Indianapolis resident and an executive with the Indiana Pacers, Bird knows the city inside out, and shares some favorite sites with Larry Bleiberg for USA TODAY.
This historic canal runs through the heart of Indianapolis, offering waterside trails, gondola rides, boat and bike rentals and Segway tours during warmer months. It’s an ideal way to see the city from a different perspective. “It’s a great walk even in cold weather,” Bird says.He’s 55, so Bird’s clubbing days are behind him. But for those who are into the club scene, he suggests checking out this neighborhood north of downtown, known for its restaurants, galleries, shops and bars. There’s “lots of nightlife,” he says.”Someone once told me the city has more memorials than Washington, D.C.,” Bird says. “I don’t know if that’s true, but there are many that recognize and honor people who have given their lives.” Visitors can’t miss the 285-foot Soldiers and Sailors Monument with its sky-high observation deck. It’s part of the 24-acre Indiana War Memorial Plaza Historic District. Home to the NCAA headquarters, this museum proves again that Indy takes its sports seriously. The two-story hall’s interactive exhibits touch on 23 NCAA sports, with tributes to legendary coaches and players, including, of course, Bird. “You can get there walking along the canal. Again, if you’re a sports fan, you should go,” he says.Long after the Giants and Patriots have left town, Indy will still celebrate its famed 500-mile auto race. The Memorial Day weekend race is touted as the largest single-day sporting event in the world. The speedway stages events throughout the year, offers tours and has a museum. It’s a place every sports fan should see, Bird says.Long after the Giants and Patriots have left town, Indy will still celebrate its famed 500-mile auto race. The Memorial Day weekend race is touted as the largest single-day sporting event in the world. The speedway stages events throughout the year, offers tours and has a museum. It’s a place every sports fan should see, Bird says.
Granted, Indy is a sports town, but it has culture too. “Not many people realize there are a lot of great museums,” Bird says. Standouts include the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Indiana State Museum and the Indianapolis Children’s Museum, which at nearly a half-million square feet is considered the world’s largest. Bird has taken his own children there many times. “If you’re in Indianapolis and you’ve got kids, you’ve got to go,” he says.Comfort food for Bird is Italian, and two of his favorite restaurants have been around since the 1930s and are located almost next to each other. “Iaria’s has got the best pizza I ever had,” Bird says. At Milano Inn, he likes the veal chops, spaghetti and calamari. Many still associate Indiana with the 1986 movie Hoosiers, a high school basketball drama that captured the state’s obsession with the sport. The climactic scene was filmed at this 1928 arena, home to the Butler University Bulldogs. Bird calls the place “an Indiana original.” When he was coach of the Pacers, he even had the team practice there to soak in the history. Go at noon on Saturday to see Butler’s men’s basketball team play the University of Detroit.It might be a football weekend, but Bird can’t resist sending visitors to his Pacers’ home court. The arena has won many awards as one of the top venues in professional sports. “I’m biased, but many think it’s the best basketball arena in the world,” he says. “Everyone has a good seat and gets a good feel for the game.” You can see it in action Saturday night when the Pacers host Orlando. Even if there won’t be a single lay-up or dunk during the Super Bowl, Bird’s still excited about the event, including the interactive NFL Experience and the state-fair-like Super Bowl Village with drink and food booths and even ziplines. It’s all near the $700 million Lucas Oil Stadium, site of the game. “I know this about Indianapolis: The city does things right on the big events, and they will do these things right,” Bird says.

The new royal star, the former Kate Middleton, chose art star Lucian Freud for her first solo patronage engagement, taking in the new exhibit of Freud’s nude portraits at the National Portrait Gallery in London Wednesday night.Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, as she is known since marrying Prince William last year, appeared in a blizzard of camera flashes when she arrived at the museum to tour Lucian Freud: Portraits, which features 100 of Freud’s most important portraits over 70 years, including the one he was painting when he died in July 2011.The duchess, 30, whose university degree is in art history, became a royal patron of the prestigious gallery last year. She was on her own because William is in the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic for a six-week posting as an RAF helicopter search-and-rescue pilot.
She was wearing a double-breasted coat dress in gray (one blogger said it was by British brand Jesire) with a wide portrait collar and a wide skirt. She had a sparkly pendant necklace at her throat and a black rope-and-metal-link belt at her waist. She had black high heels and a black clutch, and her hair was in her signature loose and flowing style.
The exhibit she toured opens Thursday in London, then will move to the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth on July 1, so Americans can see what Kate saw. What she saw was a lot of flesh, clear and smooth or wrinkled and mottled, as The Associated Press reported.Sigmund Freud and widely considered the leading British portraitist of the 20th century, was celebrated for his expressionistic nudes of family, friends and ordinary folk. Such as Sue Tilley, the 250-pound job-center worker who was the subject of several nudes, including Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, which sold at auction in 2008 for $33.6 million, a record for a living artist.Tilley was at the press preview of the exhibit, posed in front of her portrait, and hoped to meet the duchess. She said she wasn’t embarrassed about Kate seeing her naked. “I may not be the most gorgeous one under the sun but that’s what I am,” Tilley told reporters. “It’s art, you know. Poor woman, I’m sure she’s seen things before.”
Gallery director Sandy Nairne told London’s Evening Standard that the museum is thrilled to have the duchess as patron. “She came to see us last September when she was deciding which organizations to support. She was fizzing with intelligent questions,” Nairne said.
He said the gallery has begun discussions on plans for Catherine to sit for her official portrait. “It will be at least the summer before there’s anything concrete and we can start to look for an artist,” Nairne said.

Notoriously untalkative-about-her-personal-life Jennifer Aniston actually talks about Angelina Jolie and Justin Theroux in the March issue of InStyle.But first, she brings up porn!On one thing she’d do if she wasn’t an actress: “I’d love to be a dermatologist. I’d be so obsessive about it. I’m fascinated by skin, products, and lasers. I go on the Internet and read all about it. I call it ‘laser porn.’ “On her boyfriend, Justin Theroux: “First of all, he has great style it’s very specific, and it has been his style forever. Has it influenced mine? No, but I know people say it has. ‘Oh, look, you’re dressing alike. ‘And I think, No I’m not. I’ve had this jacket for three years!”What she looks for in a man: “Having experienced everything you don’t want in a partner over time, it starts to narrow down to what you actually do want. As I get older I realize what qualities are important in love and what suits me. And what I won’t settle for.”
On what makes her feel young: “You know what makes me feel old? When I see girls who are 20-something, or the new crop of actresses, and think, Aren’t we kind of the same age?(Aniston is 43.) You lose perspective. Or being offered the part of a woman with a 17-year-old child. It’s like, “I’m not old enough to have a 17-year-old!” And then you realize, well, yeah, you are. Young? I don’t feel my age. I feel young every day.”
And when asked what the press gets most wrong about her, she brings up the forbidden: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.
“The triangle with my ex-husband C and that there’s a feud there. It’s constant. It’s a story headline that won’t go away, but it’s a money thing,” says Aniston, adding that people in the media make money off “a story that has nothing to do with reality.”Ke$ha is known for her face paint, crazy hair and love of glitter.
But for the March issue of Glamour, Kesha Sebert turned down the volume, the mag says.On getting photographed without makeup On getting photographed without makeup.On succeeding as a female rock star …
“I’m not afraid of pushing boundaries. That’s what you have to do to become an icon.”
On her love of body paint …
“Oh, the body paint stays. It’s my favorite thing to do. Sometimes I have parties at my house in Nashville and it’s clothing-optional, and we just body-paint each other and run around, and I have a giant bed. I’m very much in touch with that side of myself.”
On her future in the music industry
“Eventually, I would love to be on my deathbed and looked at as an icon. Right now I’m still at the baby stages of my career. But that is the goal.”

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