Family A Journey to Forever!: March 2017

I won a $200 gift card from MWR. So Jeremy and I researched some day trips to use our gift card.

We found this chocolate and cheese tasting tour in Switzerland. Well,if there is one thing Jeremy and I love It's chocolate and cheese. So this tour seemed perfect for us. We signed up to go on March 18, 2017 We had to go to outdoor recreation at 3:30am. Yes, we love these super early mornings.

We loaded the bus and left around 4:00am. Jeremy and I took our favorite place in the bus. The very back. We both went right back to sleep and slept until the bus stopped for the mandatory stop. I had packed breakfast and we sat and ate and enjoyed our break.

Our first Tour was at Maison Cailler at 9:00am.

As you walk into the building you are greeted by all these chocolates hanging from the ceiling.
Don't they look scrumptious? YUM

The walls were filled with all kinds of posters and saying If you eat chocolate... this will happen.
Chocolate Makes you happy. Etc.

We got to discover the magical world of Cailler chocolate,
the oldest existing Swiss Chocolate Brand.

My Sweetheart and I, on another European adventure.

We started our Audio Tour with the history of chocolate and how Cocoa first arrived in Europe.
We went through a number of rooms and it was quite the show. Lights, sounds, smells, lots of stories.
Did you know that Chocolate use to be given to prisoners? It was before the sugar was added so it was a yucky
bitter drink.

We learned all about the Part Switzerland played in Chocolate.
The Cows that produced the Fresh alpine milk.

Also the explanations of the Callier History.

After the tour you entered a room that was filled with individual stories from the Cocoa Pod,
to the dairy farmer, all the way to a factory worker. It was very educational.

They had bins and bins of Cocoa Butter, Cocoa Beans, Almonds, and Hazelnuts.
You could touch, sniff, feel and taste.

We got to pass a real working production plant. We got to watch the as the chocolate turned into
logs, and dipped in chocolate, wrapped and at the end of the production line we got to taste the chocolate.
Yumm My favorite part.

That's a lot of Chocolate.

They had a tasting room. I have never thrown away so much Chocolate.
You had to eat the chocolate in the room. It couldn't leave they had 7-10 different
Chocolates you could try. Now they were not little pieces. It was like eating 10 rich truffles in a row.
I just couldn't do it. I would take a little bite and throw it away. I wish they would have given us a little box and we
could put one chocolate and eat them at our leisure. Jeremy didn't have any problem eating all the Chocolate.
He just wished he could have savored it a little bit more. You were kind of rushed through the lines.
The Chocolate was amazing and soooo delicious. JUST TOO MUCH CHOCOLATE!!!

We got to watch two Cailler Chocolatiers making delicious chocolate treats.
I personally could not eat them. Not because they were not delicious, and mouth watering, but because it was
TOO MUCH CHOCOLATE!

Another Cailler Chocolatier... You guessed it you could have eaten more chocolate.
UMM No Thank YOU!

Jer and I had a little time to shop for some souvenirs. We wanted to take some
Swiss chocolate home to share with the kids and to enjoy when we were not so done with Chocolate. Ha!

Our next stop was La Maison Du Gruyere.

Jeremy and I back in time.
With the Beautiful Swiss Alps in the background.

This beautiful cow art is in the foyer of Le Gruyere.

As we started our tour we were all given an Audio Wand with the instruction to press the number the picture indicated.
When you start the guide, you are introduced to the narrator, a Cow!
Her name is "Cherry" because she was born during cherry season, of course.
She first takes your on a short informational board all about cows and how they play into the making of cheese.

The tour is very interactive and hands on. You get to smell all the things that cows eat and try and guess what they are.
Some smelled really good others not so good. They all were very strong.
It was so fun. Here is Jeremy stopping to smelling the flowers. Or was he just trying to pick his nose?

After the information, you enter the Gallery where you can see the cheese machines behind glass. There are a couple
videos running on loops, showing the whole cheese process.
You can actually watch the entire process from beginning to end if you wanted to stay there all day. We opted to watch the video.

We got to watch as the milk churns in this giant vat.
The vat held enough milk to make 80 wheels of cheese.
That is A LOT of cheese.

After the milk curdles it is put into a wheel and that wheel weighs 35 kg
after it is formed it is moved into a salt bath.

The last stage is the aging process. They have 6 months, 8 moths, and 10 months.
This is the actual storage where the aging happens. It was pretty cool.
Fun little fact did you know Cows eat 180 Kilos of Grass and drinks 85 liters of water per day?
Do you know how many liters of milk she produces per day?
20 liters of milk. Isn't that crazy! One wheel of cheese had 400 liters of milk.We learned so much from Cherry and loved the interactive and fun tour of cheese making.

The cute town of Gruyeres.
It was pouring rain. We forgot to bring our umbrellas. So we got to explore this fun town in the pouring rain. It took us about fifteen minutes to get to the Castle.

We are about to enter the Castle wall and head back in time...

We got to watch the historical presentation of Gruyeres.
I have to tell you this little town is so entertaining from the Chocolate and Cheese Factories to the Castle.
This film was amazing and hit all the senses. They had lights and action up in the rafters. It was fabulous!

I never got a very good picture of the front of the castle. So this picture is the backside from the gardens.
The Medieval Castle offers a walk through eight centuries of architecture, history and culture. The Castle was constructed in 1270-1282 It is a medieval Castle. In 1938 the Castle was turned into a museum and opened to the public.

This giant metal plaque decorated the entrance to the castle.

Inside the castle walls

The arch on the left is where you enter the castle.

Gruyeres Castle is in the upper valley of the Saane River
and stands in the midst of the green, pre-alpine, Fribourg foothills.

Jer and I standing on the medieval battlement wall and look at this beautiful view.

St. Theodul Church built in 1254
and the cemetery.

Jer and I in the pouring rain in front of St. Theodul Church.

According to legend, the village of Gruyeres was founded by the knight Gruerius, who spotted a crane lying by, took it as an omen and decided to settle in this lovely land.
A crane is a "Grue" in French. You can find these cranes all over the town.

The Castle was full of beautiful artwork and tapestries.

Gruyeres castle contain many old artefacts. Kayden loves anything medieval so I took a picture of
the weapons just for him.

Here is the Kitchen it has a huge fire place with pot-hangers,
mechanical skewer and a sandstone oven and bread oven. Look at the cobble stone floor.

This was the Bailiffs Room. It was probably used as a study by the bailiffs of Fribourg who were placed there to rule the area from 1555 to 1798.

The Corot's Room a beautiful artistic room.
The room is named after Camille Corot she painted four medallions.

This fireplace was in the Count's room and it was ginormous.

The Garden
A formally sculpted French garden is maintained behind the chateau.

The views from the castle were beautiful.
It stopped raining for after a while and we got some great pictures of the countryside.

The Music Room

I love the exposed beams with decals on them; stunning.

The Knights Room

The Palace China

The West Wing: the rounded portion is where the spiral staircase connects the floors.

The Spiral staircase the walls were filled with art.

These trees remind me of the Joshua Trees in Arizona.

The little town of Gruyeres.

My Sweetheart with the Alps in the background.
I love this MAN of mine.

Here is a memorial of the women were left along by their warring men, defended the castle from attacked by
attaching flaming torches to their goats horns, and causing them to run down the hill. The enemy fled from the army of the devil and the Women and the goats saved the day and the castle.

For lunch before heading back on the bus we headed back to
La Maison Du Gruyere for some yummy Cheese fondue.
It was so strong and it was a lot of cheese. Jeremy and I both commented on the
amazing race challenge where they had to eat an entire pot of fondue. We couldn't even finish half of one.

We got a side of pickles and onions.
They were perfect they were pickled so that vinegar helped
tone down the cheese. It was super yummy!

Jeremy enjoying his fondue with Potatoes and bread. YUMMM

Tina loving the Fondue and potatoes with bread.

We wanted to try some Meringue. So were were trying to find out what dessert we wanted.
Our server suggested we get two meringues and two scoops of ice cream with their famous creme.
Our dessert came and the ice cream was so delicious. The vanilla bean was the best we have ever had.
We took a bite of the meringue and it was so sweet. Jeremy took a bite of the cream and was like that is different?
Our server came back and explained to us that Gruyere is famous not only for its cheese, but also for it's double cream. He told us to put the cream on the Meringue. Oh that was magic. It was so delicious.

The Meringue with the double cream.
YUMMMM

Holy Smokes this was the most expensive meal Jeremy and I have had in Europe!
Just the two of us. Crazy that the Fondue was 50 euro.... holy smokes.
It's nice that we didn't have to pay for the trip. The only expense we had was this one meal and some souvenirs.
I say all in all it was a perfect day with the Love of my life.