Today was a day of food. Remy and Yvonne are food scientists. Remy worked for Nestle for many years. We started the day by going to Gruyere to learn how cheese is made. We went to the main Gruyere manufacturing plant. We saw the vats of cheese and how they decanted it into the molds, pressed it and then aged it. Here are some pictures.
They gave us samples that had been aged 6, 8, and 10 months so after the tour we had fun having a taste test. Then Rick went into the shop and bought a bunch more cheese. We are bringing home about 10 pounds of cheese.
Purchases made, we headed to the town of Gruyere for some lunch. Gruyere is a very cute town with wonderful views.
Rick, Yvonne and Remy had a traditional vegetable soup that historically the cow herders made up in the mountains. I had meat!
After lunch we went to Nestles chocolate factory. They had an interesting multimedia show about the history of chocolate which ended up with a demonstration on how they make the chocolate and samples. I ate a lot of chocolate that day. It was fun. Here a chocolate sculpture.
Here’s a picture of us at the Nestle store.
We returned to Remy and Yvonne, packed up our stuff, and said goodbye (we are hoping to see them this summer too). Next stop Geneva. We have a 7:00 am flight tomorrow morning so we are going to spend the night at a hotel near the airport. We stopped at a grocery store on the way to get our usual picnic dinner.
We checked in to our hotel and then returned the rental car. We tried to make it and early night because we need to take the 5:40 shuttle to the airport.