Most of our trip is through regions of Switzerland that speak German as their primary language. But one of our options from Lauterbrunnen was a day trip into the French-speaking region for cheese, a castle, and chocolate. After the hiking yesterday, we wanted something a little less intense, and this day trip seemed to fit the bill. We planned out the timing for the trains we’d need take the night before, and decided to take advantage of our hotel’s picnic lunch service so we didn’t have to specifically schedule a stop and could just eat whenever we got hungry. We grabbed a quick breakfast in the morning, picked up our lunches from the front desk, and then hit the road. Er…train.

A few hours later, we arrived at La Maison du Gruyère to learn about (and taste!) their cheese. Our travel passes got us in free. The visit started with an audio guide (a cow named Cherry) who told us all about how humans ensure she produces quality milk so they can turn it into quality cheese. There were smelling samples of many of the things cows eat that ultimately affect the way the cheese tastes. Some of them were quite pleasant (mostly flower varieties) and others were kind of gross on their own. We got to see the machines and highlights of the process to make the cheese, then things wrapped up with a view into the aging cellars where they can store up to 7000 wheels of Gruyère AOP. We each got three pieces of different ages to sample. I liked the oldest best (it was the saltiest), while Amber liked the middle option.

With the cheese portion of our day complete, next we climbed up the hill to Gruyères village. Our destination was the Château de Gruyères. On the way up, we worked out the details for a letterbox cache that’s part of the Grand Tour series of caches at popular destinations across Switzerland. (The one in Appenzell that gave us so much trouble was also part of this series.) We got stuck at one point looking for a date required to open the cache box. Amber finally decided that some squiggles must be it, and it turned out she was right.

With the cache found, we continued to the castle. It was cool to see the inside and learn a little bit of its history. The castle was home to many different artists over its last couple hundred years, so most of what was on display inside was artwork. That might be ok to a point, but it was mostly from the last few decades, and some of it was really weird (think flowers-with-hands-for-stems-that-are holding-a-baby-faced-sun sort of weird). Not exactly our cup of tea. (And we liked it so much we forgot to take a picture.)

By this point we were hungry, so we settled down in a small park and broke out our lunches. Ham and cheese sandwiches, apples, candy bars, and water. Butter probably wouldn’t have been our first condiment choice for the sandwiches, but it was better than expected. We discovered that the water was “with gas” which is kind of gross, but we were pretty pleased overall considering how easy this was for us.

Then the chocolate! A quick two trains after lunch took us to Broc to visit Maison Callier. The tour started with a humorous elevator ride that took us down approximately 18 inches. Yes, really. It continued through a series of eight rooms, each with a portion on our audio guides supplemented by interactive displays, and the door to each subsequent room opened automatically when it was time to move on. Every person on the tour had their own audio unit in their own language. This initial part on the history of chocolate was a bit cheesy (wait, wasn’t that earlier?) but it was also really well done. The audio units were pretty cool because once this guided part was over, we were able to go to our choice of individual stations and hold the unit near a scan point (probably NFC) to hear the relevant content.

We listened to most of the optional audio stops and tasted a few ingredients like almonds and hazelnuts, before we broke down and skipped to the reason we were there: the chocolate tasting! Seven or eight flavors later, there was only one we didn’t like very much (marzipan and orange). The rest were delicious! Finally we had to decide what to buy to take home (or at least out of the store). We managed to limit ourselves to just six chocolate bars and two boxed assortments.

The last few trains of the day where uneventful, but gave us time to pick a spot for dinner in Interlaken. Amber chose a place called Hüsi Bierhaus. We tried a couple of local beers on tap, and the food was pretty good, too. Amber had mac and cheese with bacon, and I had the “mega bratwürst” which was extremely tasty. After dinner, we caught the last train of the day back to Lauterbrunnen.