Going to the land of cheese...

Gruyere cheese anyone?
How about gruyere that is actually MADE in the town of Gruyeres, Switzerland?!
We visited this pretty little town over the weekend and had a fabulous time. Gruyeres is about one and half hours from Geneva, a pretty easy drive.

The village of Gruyeres dates back to the 11th century and some of the original stone houses and the original Castle built by the Counts of Gruyeres still stand.

The castle, constructed in the 13th century, was home to a long succession of Gruyères counts. Michel, the last of them, faced financial difficulties and declared bankruptcy in 1554. The creditors - the towns of Fribourg and Berne - shared his land between them. The Castle became the headquarters of the Fribourg bailiffs (1555-1798), then the prefects' residence until 1848. It was put up for sale in 1849 and became the property of the Bovy family of Geneva, who stayed there in summer and took care of restoration of the site with their artist friends. In 1938, the State of Fribourg bought the Castle and opened a museum.
Going through all the rooms reminded me a lot of walking through Biltmore House... You can see why...

 CJ posing in the medieval man room...

And here is the castle garden. Gorgeous. You can almost picture little medieval princesses running around there on a summer day. Amazing views.

 Also interesting - and I guarantee you've never heard of this before - the artist who developed the aliens for the uber famous Alien movie series (with S. Weaver) has a museum at the castle. His name is HR Geiger. Who would have thought. I know I never knew a Swiss guy was behind the Alien... There are huge alien statues there, images, and even an Alien themed Cafe, where you sit on really odd and scary looking chairs.

For our lunch we chose a more traditional Swiss place, a small oldfashioned place called La Halle de Granaire. Cory ordered a yummy roasted chicken and fries and I went for the traditional Gruyeres gruyere Fondue. Believe it or not, my first fondue since we've been here. It was delicious! Served with a lot of crusty bread for dunking. I actually managed to finish the whole thing. Boy was a stuffed! I swear I was sweating cheese for the rest of the day.... haha... Yummy!

We spent so long at the castle and eating lunch that when we finally got to the La Maison de Gruyere, the dairy where the cheese production is demonstrated for visitors, the daily cycle was 10 minutes away from being finished... Shoot. I guess we'll have to go back and eat MORE cheese another day... Twist my arm... Haha...