Last Castle...I promise!

Gruyeres, Switzerland
Yesterday we drove to Fribourg where you can find the quaint medieval village of Gruyeres. The town is known for it's beautiful castle on a hill, but more so for their famous Gruyere cheese (which is oh so delicious!)
I did not do enough research for this day trip so we found ourselves in the middle of a valley of snow without the proper shoes! Natalie was even wearing tennis shoes! So the challenge of the day was to keep the kids out of the snow so their feet would stay dry and their complaints would stay minimal...that proved to be quite difficult. They ran for every snow bank they could find!
To get up to the castle we first walked through the adorable village. It was made even more adorable as the tinkering of a piano could be heard from one of the apartments as a piano teacher gave her lessons. ;) My kids remarked how much they miss their piano.

Toe village looking toward the castle. The temperatures were freezing this morning!

The village looking from the castle, from whence we came :)

The town fountain was frozen

 The castle itself was built in the 1200's and belonged to the Count of Gruyeres. In the 1500's Count Michel went bankrupt after much effort to recover and the castle became the property of the neighboring cantons of Fribourg and Bern. During this time it was occupied by various bailiffs who were in charge of the residence and soon theRomantic Period brought new fascination with the property. A man named Daniel Bovy purchased the castle during the 1850's and renovated it for his brother Auguste, an artist who lived in the castle with many of his friends, creating a sort of artist commune. Many of his paintings are on display in the castle. Eventually Fribourg bought the castle back and now it is maintained by a foundation and houses a few art galleries and is available for tours to the public. ;)

Century walk to the ramparts from the courtyard

Extremely large fireplace

Most of the rooms are decorated in the Romantic period for the Bovy family

A view of the garden from the balcony of the castle

A painting from Auguste Bovy

The most interesting room in the castle depicts scenes of the castle's ownership history. During the early Middle Ages, occupants of the town fought in the Crusades as well as many other battles.

The most impressive part of the castle are the views from the top.

Gruyeres is also the home to the HR Giger museum. Walking out of the castle, the elegance and delicacy of the Romantic Period is soon juxtaposed with the cold angular lines of anorexic metal women with rods shooting from their breasts as they stand erect on the sidewalks at the museum entrance. It is probably the most inappropriate place for this museum, but maybe that is just because I'm not a huge Giger fan.
We had lunch in the village at a restaurant with a magnificent view of the valley. Jeff and I wanted to try Raclette, a traditional Swiss meal. The restaurant was sweet and the views were amazing.

Ready for some Raclette!

This device is placed on the table. The top part has a heat coil that melts the cheese and the cheese part swivels around so each guest can scrape it off.

Once the cheese is melted, you scrape it off onto the food. Traditionally it is served with potatoes, pickles, and onions.

Once again, we discovered that the Swiss just use food as a vehicle in which to get cheese into their bodies! It was yummy! Jeff and I consumed about two thirds of that cheese block. Stunning.
We left the restaurant and headed over to Broc. The kids had a class scheduled at the Cailler Chocolate factory.

Nestle and Cailler are partners

The Cailler Factory

Chocolate bars...yes, we picked up a "few"

I had signed the girls up for a class. They made their own chocolate bars.

The pics are not high quality: taken from a platform, through glass, at a window, with my iphone haha

The finished product. The class was in French but the girls got the gist of it and had a lot of fun. I am proud of them for being such troopers.

When the girls were finished with their class we took a tour of the Factory. The best part....they had an tour in English!!!! YAY!!! The Cailler company has put quite an effort into their tour and it was like something you would expect to find at Disneyland with small decorated, themed rooms, automated animation, and a narrator telling the entire story of Francois Cailler and his association with other famous chocolate makers like Kohler and Nestle. We learned so much on the tour and were taken through the process of making their candy.

Cailler gets it's cacoa beans from many different countries. As of late Africa has been a bigger producer than the formerly popular South American countries.

Natalie with a quite large bag of Hazelnuts

Chocolate going into the cooling machine and getting ready to be cut into pieces, coated with chocolate and hazelnuts, then packaged.

The finished product and the consumer

Anytime!

The tasting room. Our favorite part!

All of the different chocolate brands were laid out for us to taste. "Take your time in there" they tell you. We did! But by the time we had wound around the room, we could not eat any more of the rich chocolate pieces!

After the tour we spent some time and money in the gift shop then rushed home to the boys as we were out a bit later than usual. Very busy and tiring day but quite successful!