Gruyeres

We drove from Simplon Pass to Gruyeres, not knowing what to expect. The idea was to eat fondue at the source of Gruyere cheese. It was dark when we arrived and all we could see was this castle illuminated on a hill. It turns out that Gruyeres is a beautiful little cobblestone village built around the castle.

We had picked our hotel rather quickly from a web site that we saw at the hotel in Bologna. It turned out to be the perfect place - a small inn set away from the village with beautiful views of the mountains surrounding it.

It was late, so we went immediately up the hill to have dinner in a chalet beside the castle. The town now operates on tourism, but there were almost no tourists there because it was the off season.

Sky and I had a wonderful cheese fondue, served with small boiled potatoes as it was in Lugano. They didn't serve cut up bread, but said we could use the sliced loaf that they put on the table for Anna and True's raclette. Raclette, if any of you don't know, is a block of cheese heated by a portable broiler. You scrape off the melted cheese and eat it on bread.

Both the fondue and raclette were delicious, being made with locally produced cheese. I drank a carafe of light white wine and the boys and I got very silly mimicking drunkards. There was a lot of laughing.

We had ice cream sundaes for desert. The ice cream was served with a side of hot chocalate and a small pot of double cream. The cream in Gruyeres was delicious. They also served a pot of even thicker cream at breakfast to spread on fluffy orange bread.

Anna and I got up and took a walk before the sun reached above the mountaintops. The town was empty. Anna had a drink from the fountain in the main square and we walked around the walls of the castle.

The boys and I took another walk after breakfast. We went to look at the cows grazing near town.

It was very cold. Most of the cows were wearing cow bells and the sound of their bells was lovely in the clear air.

It was beautiful.

The boys liked the cows. This one was standing beside a water trough, which was filled with two feet of clear water frozen solid.

This is the view from the hotel window. You can click on the images to see them larger.

We drove back to Lausanne and caught the TGV, or high-speed train, back to Paris. We arrived in the evening and had dinner at a restaurant across from the Gare de Lyon. We had wanted to eat at Le Train Bleu, the wonderful belle epoque restaurant in the station, but it wasn't serving dinner for another two hours.

True made the word search above for me while waiting for his dinner.

Anna and I celebrated our return with a half dozen delicious oysters.