En Suisse

OK, the rehash of the trip is starting to get a little boring. How are you all holding up? I now give you Switzerland, in one huge chunk. Enjoy, I promise it'll all be over soon.

First of all Switzerland was only OK. Evan put it best when he said that Switzerland is the price we had to pay for going to Germany. The roads weren't as good, making driving less fun. The route between Zurich and Bern wasn't particularly picturesque. Everything was insanely expensive. And don't even get me started on the Schweizerdeutsch (Swiss German dialect) - yikes.

But we did have a great time in Gruyeres (yes, after the cheese) and in Montreux at Chateau de Chillon. Both are west of Bern, and the drive there gave us a nice taste of Swiss countryside you see in postcards.

Inside the cheese factory - they had these cool cannisters where you could smell all of the various veg the cows eat, that in turn flavor the cheese.


The playground outside, with the Alps in the background


When we were done in Gruyeres, we continued our westward route to Montreux and Chateau de Chillon, which is on the Eastern shore of Lake Geneva.


View of Lake Geneva & the Alps


Headed towards the entrance




"Self!" (what he says when he wants to do things himself, and the stairs were on the list)


Evan took this shot from one of the upper turrets (is that a word?). Nice bird's eye view of the courtyard and a very tiny A & C.


View of Lake Geneva from inside - don't you love the finger?


Tuesday we hung out in Bern, which was only OK. Definitely my least favorite of all the things we did. But maybe we were just ready to be home.

A shot of E & C on a bridge over the Aar River


The building where Einstein lived when he figured out E = mc^2.


Headed to see the bears...


The famous Bern bears - Bern actually means "bears" and Duke Ferdinand decided to go fully authentic and actually have some bears on site.


The Bern Zytglogge - the hourly movement of the astrological clock apparently inspired Einstein's theory of relativity

Our best dinner out at the Curling Club's restaurant. Charlie was mesmerized, and we got to eat in peace.




Our last day we went to Fribourg, a city that bizarrely captures the Swiss divide - half the town speaks German, the other half French. Thank god the Italians didn't get a toehold somewhere. This was one of our few days of crappy weather, so we decided to hit Chocolaterie Villars and then call it a day.

Eating chocolate, and washing it down with hot chocolate. Heaven.


Count Chocula