Oh, for the love of chocolate!

Customers wait for the doors to open at the Chocolate Lovers Festival in Fairfax Va. on Saturday, Feb. 6. (Kathy Stewart/ WTOP)
Customers wait for the doors to open at the Chocolate Lovers Festival in Fairfax Va. on Saturday, Feb. 6, 2016. (Kathy Stewart/ WTOP)
(Kathy Stewart/ WTOP)
Soon as the door swung open the people started flooding into the Chocolate Lovers Festival on Saturday, Feb. 6. (Kathy Stewart/ WTOP)
Soon as the door swung open the people started flooding into the Chocolate Lovers Festival in Fairfax City, Va. on Saturday, Feb. 6, 2016. (Kathy Stewart/ WTOP)
(Kathy Stewart/ WTOP)
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Customers wait for the doors to open at the Chocolate Lovers Festival in Fairfax Va. on Saturday, Feb. 6. (Kathy Stewart/ WTOP)
Soon as the door swung open the people started flooding into the Chocolate Lovers Festival on Saturday, Feb. 6. (Kathy Stewart/ WTOP)

FAIRFAX, Va. – Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is just a movie, but the two-day Chocolate Lovers Festival in Fairfax City may be the next best thing.  This festival is a great way to get rid of the winter blues, especially if you are a chocoholic.

For two-days each year, the city becomes a chocolate lover’s destination.  If you missed Saturday, the festival hours on Sunday are from noon until 4 p.m., though the doors for Sunday’s Taste of Chocolate event close at 3:30 p.m.

Taste of Chocolate is very popular each year.  And each year there is a line of people waiting for the doors open for the Taste of Chocolate.

It takes place inside of the Old Town Hall (at the corner of Main Street and University Drive).  There is chocolate everywhere — actually there are two floors of chocolate confections. “There’s chocolate lollipops, there’s ice cream — anything you can think of that’s chocolate you can find in this building,” says Beverly Myers with the festival.  She says this year there are about 17 vendors with about 30 tables set up.

For Springfield resident Eric Gorr, truffles are what have lured  him to Taste of Chocolate for about eight years.  He says that he can’t them anywhere else.  Now, he has a dilemma: “(I’m just) trying to decide which ones I want to get this year.”

There are multiple events taking place during the two-day festival, such as a pancake breakfast and the Chocolate Challenge, which is basically an art gallery that is made out of cakes and cupcakes. Both the pros and amateurs take part in the challenge and there are different categories in which the entries are judged. There is face painting, a puppet show and a magic show among the numerous events.

The first Chocolate Lovers Festival was held in 1993.

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