Gruyères

The thought of cheese, chocolate and double cream with meringues was drawing us to Gruyères in Canton Fribourg. We jumped into Mitch and Lu's little red car and headed to the district of Gruyère up a hill which had a castle perched on top. The town of Gruyères was a quaint and inviting little town full of little cafes and boutique grocery stores which were all selling mountain-loads of cheese, chocolate and any other local tasty treats. We wandered the cobbled street until the thought of double cream and meringues enveloped our brains until we couldn't function until we ate them (well mine anyway). A friend had told me about this local speciality and said that we must try it! I didn't need much convincing really..

We waited in anticipation until the waitress brought out two plates which had two lovely, rose coloured meringues and a little pot of the magic cream on them. I almost jumped off my chair in excitement and almost bit Roy's hands off when he started to eat them. They didn't last very long and soon we were fighting over the dregs in the little red pot. If we weren't amongst company then I probably would have licked the pot clean.

It sounds like a fairly simple thing really but they truly were very tasty! It's dangerous that they sell that stuff in the shops ten minutes drive from our place and now that we have our own set of wheels... eep! I'm sorry pants.. you may have to be traded in for a new pair.

After we finished off those tasty treats we explored the little town some more. We decided to avoid going in the castle (I think we've seen our fair share of castles) and opted to walk around it instead and admire the surrounding mountain view.

As if the feast of meringues and cream wasn't enough, we went to the factory where Gruyère cheese is made. It was pretty interesting but a little underwhelming with a little steam-sealed packet of Gruyère cheese to sample and a rather annoying audio guided tour.

We were itching to go to the nearby town of Broc to have a tour of Maison Cailler which was much more satisfying than the cheese factory. The tour was really quite interesting. It's a well thought out tour with great visual aids to tell the story of the history of chocolate and how Cailler chocolate came to be. After seeing the history of the company, we got to watch a machine create mini bars of Branches (a hazelnut chocolate bar). We then came to a tray piled with Branches for us to sample. We were like kids in a candy store and since there wasn't anyone monitoring the tray we took a few more than we probably should have.

We were pretty proud of ourselves after we gobbled down the handful of chocolate treats that we took until we came to a room full of trays of different Cailler chocolates for us to sample. At first there was no one there watching so we took our time and sampled each and every chocolate until a uniformed lady came and told us to move along so we just started taking one of each chocolate and putting them on our hand to eat outside at our own pace... until we got in trouble again. We all felt like little naughty children with melting chocolates in our hands. To our defence, there wasn't a sign telling us that we couldn't sample one of each. There was just too many nice ones to pass up.

Gruyère is definitely a great place to go to check out what Switzerland has to offer in terms of cheese, chocolate and more tasty treats. If anyone is planning a small holiday in Switzerland then Gruyère is a great place to start.