swiss alps…caille chocolate factory…gruyeres cheese factory…and a medieval castle…

sept. 15.  2012

day 6

we awoke thinking we had a rental car(just made the resv. last night), and received a call this morning saying they didn’t have anymore cars, which we decided wasn’t a big deal since there are so many trains.  we ate a lovely breakfast in the hotel, and then walked to the train station, caught a train from montreux to montbovon, and then on to bulle, then caught the train to broc, where we went to a yummy swiss chocolate factory tour, and chocolate tasting.  to be quite honest, i didn’t think the chocolate was that great…belgian chocolate is much better!

the views along the trains were gorgeous, and great photo opps.  i felt like we would spot heidi and peter at any moment…it looked just like the movies.  after the chocolate tour, we trained back from broc to bulle, and then on to gruyeres.  gruyeres is where we did a swiss cheese tour, and ate cheese samples on our 10 minute walk up to the medieval town and chateau de gruyeres.  wow, absolutely amazing.  the medieval castle was exactly like you see in books…we toured the chateau room by room, and walked through the medieval village.  there was a show of five men blowing the alphorns in the center of town.  we had to buy(or jarom decided it was necessary), to get swiss army knives while in switzerland, so we visited one of the small shops in the village, and got our souvenirs and chocolate, and headed back to the train.

we were on time, ready to go, got on the train that pulled up, and even asked the conductor to make sure it was heading back to montbovon, and it ended up going the opposite direction than we needed, back to bulle.  so that was over an hour that that put us back.  we waited at bulle for an hour, and then got on the right train back to montbovon, and then on to montreux.  i’d say we did a pretty good job navigating all the trains, the extra hour and a half pushed us over the exhausted and hungry line though.  we made it back, and had dinner at the hotel, which was very nice.  we left this morning at 10:00am, and got home at 9:30pm, and that’s walking and training all day.  the girls are absolutely amazing.  they are excellent travel buddies, they just go, go, go, with hardly a complaint.

isabelle and mi’chelle(relatives) got our girls little gifts, including chocolate for us all, which was so sweet.  oh man, i’m not going to fit into anything after this trip.  we did walk quite a few miles today, hoping that helps!
exhausted and ready for some rest!  good night.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *