Switzerland - Part 5 - Gruyeres

This is the fifth post, in a series about my trip to Switzerland.  You can find the previous posts (1) here, (2) here, (3) here and (4) here.

The fifth day of the trip to Switzerland was on the culinary side of the country.  To start off, my wife and I were trying to get going, early in the morning, to meet up with my oldest daughter.  We couldn't find any place open for breakfast...until we found the Pretzel King (translation).  I enjoyed this giant pretzel, with a hot dog in the middle of it.  It was actually great:

We drove for about 45 minutes to Bern, Switzerland.  This is the location of the LDS Swiss Temple, to nearest LDS temple for most of this area of Europe.  It's a stunning building - pure white, surrounded by a wonderful little town full of green hills and trees.  There are a few pictures, because of how important this building is to me, and my entire faith:

At that point, we continued our culinary adventure.  We headed straight for the city of Gruyères.  Our first stop, was to worship a little Swiss chocolate ;)  Our little band ended up at the Cailler Chocolate Factory (Mason Cailler) just outside the city, in a town called Broc:

François-Louis Cailler brought the first chocolate recipe to Switzerland in 1819. His family has been involved in making chocolate, and especially milk chocolate, since that time. We were drawn to the gift shop, just by the smell:

A & my wife - picture taken by A's husband D, who returned from his business trip to join us

Even baby L knew that the chocolate was good...

We ended up taking the factory tour.  This was a mix of actual production, with a little showmanship thrown in. The "show" told about the history of chocolate itself, from the beginnings of cocoa beans in South America, to the production in Europe.  The "show" was a little corny - but that made it all the more fun.  Here are a couple of video clips from the tour, to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.  In the first clip, chocolate is introduced to Europe.  You may not be able to hear the audio well, but they indicate that the "ladies" went crazy for chocolate.  I'll let you debate the level of sexism here vs historical accuracy.  However, keep your eyes focused on the woman's portrait, to see her reaction to chocolate:

To be completely honest, I've met a few women (even in my family) who react to chocolate this strongly ; )  This next clip talks about the history of chocolate in Switzerland.  I'm sure you'll appreciate the special effects, as much as we did:

Moving forward, we saw the actual production process.  This was really interesting, to see all the different kinds of cocoa beans from around the world.  We got to touch and smell the variety of beans used for their chocolate:

We then saw the actual process by which Cailler makes their famous "Branches".  This is a stick of chocolate that looks - I kid you not - like a little tree branch:

An actual Cailler Branche

We were given access to an large supply of Branche samples.  However, this was nothing compared to what came next.  We made our way past the rest of the production line (behind glass, so we didn't impact the sacred chocolate) and were treated to the Cailler Taster Room.  This had samples of every chocolate that they make.  You could eat as much as you wanted:

Lait = milk, Lait Noisettes = chocolate w/Hazelnuts

I'm not going to lie to you - I had to take a few units of insulin after this part of the tour ; )  The chocolate was heavenly.  In Switzerland, it's a battle between Cailler (owned by Nestlé) and Lindt.  I'm partial to Lindt truffles, but the chocolate we sampled was outstanding.  The whole family enjoyed it:

A and D making careful choices, with my wife supervising quality control behind them ; )

We lingered in the Tasting Room as long as we could.  You'd be surprised how little chocolate you can consume, before the richness gets to be too much.  Until that limit, I settled on the plain milk chocolate and milk chocolate w/Hazelnut as my favorites.  I'm not a big dark chocolate fan (unless it's See's Candies, by the way).

We continued the adventure by heading straight into the town of Gruyères itself.  This was a quaint (my daughter refers to this as "cutesy") little city that gives its name to the well-known Gruyère cheese, and is built up around the Château de Gruyères.

The castle itself was built between 1270 and 1282, and sits on a hill that gives it a wonderful view of the entire valley.  Around it, the town emerged, and it's one of the loveliest "European" looking cities around:

Yeah, those white legs walking down the left side of the street are mine...

We took a short break for lunch, as the restaurants in Gruyerés looked great.  We settled on one that had a patio in back, that looked out onto the valley below:

A + D, with my wife

You can't eat in Gruyerés without having dishes that feature Gruyere cheese.  We settled on cheese fondue and an amazing macaroni & cheese (with a Swiss flag, for effect):

The mac & cheese had bits of bacon and onion mixed in, to take it over-the-top

We then made our way up to the actual castle.  As I said, the view was amazing.  From a defensive standpoint, this was a smart place to build a fort...for us modern tourists, the views were peaceful, with the faint sound of cowbells in the distance:

Rather than pay the fee to tour a sparse interior, we simply walked on a path around the outside the castle walls.  I think we made the right choice.  The shade was welcome, as it was pretty warm that day:

My wife and both daughters (one of them is asleep - you guess which one)

My son-in-law, who is a good photographer, and provided a good number of the blog pictures

C'mon...I held off on goofing around for quite a while...

What normal people do with a lovely scene like this...aren't they cute?

What abnormal people do with a lovely scene like this...

She's already bored with castles...

The rest of the town was lovely...with little touches that made it a great place to visit:

We closed out the day of culinary delight with a little visit to the La Maison du Gruyère - one of the local cheese factories that produces the famous Gruyére cheese. We couldn't take pictures on the tour, but managed to capture just a couple.

We learned about the special cows in the Gruyére area, that produce the milk to give the cheese such a unique taste.  I didn't realize how much the local grass and wildflowers - that the cows eat - impacted the taste of the cheese.  All in all, it was a great learning experience.  They gave us samples to take with us.  We had cheese that was aged 6 months, 8 months and 10 months.  The difference in the strength of the taste, as it aged, was stunning.  I prefer the 8 month, myself:

That's it for today.  I still can't believe we did all of that in one day!  We did spend the night in Lausanne, as we didn't want to drive all the way back to Zurich.  Tomorrow - a special experience involving the Olympics.  Thanks for reading!