Annecy and Chateau Gruyere

In 1998, we took a short trip to Europe.

I was working for a company and I had to go to Geneva, so the company paid for my trip, and I paid for the rest of the family.

We had 6 days.

We were in Geneva, (Switzerland) Annecy, (France) Bern and Gruyere,(Switzerland) then we saw Mt. Blanc, (France) and a side trip to the Italian side of the Matterhorn - Monte Cervinia.

The Swiss side is the Zermatt ski resort.

Here are a few photos we found.

The first night we stayed at a farmhouse outside of Geneva. It was out of this world. For the other nights, we went to the nearby medieval town of Annecy, France on Lac Annecy, where we met some friends from the company I was doing some consulting for. Well, that was MIT.

Geneva.

This is a view of the town of Annecy.This town lies just south of Geneva, Switzerland, but is in France, and it was settled, beginning in the 10th century.

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This is a view of the town of Annecy.This town lies just south of Geneva, Switzerland, but is in France, and it was settled, beginning in the 10th century.

The ladies make and sell incredible bobbin lace (old fashioned, hand-knotted lace). The ice cream is delicious.

This kind of village stays in your memory forever.  I have French students now and I am thinking a lot about France.

This is the famous suspension bridge near Annecy in the Haute Savoie region.  We bought some absolutely adorable little dolls in regional dress for a few dollars.

Close up of the bridge.

One of the dolls we bought.

The Gruyere castle at the foot of the pre-Alpine foothills, in the medieval village of Fribourg. The castle is one of the most magnificent castles in Switzerland. Yes, Gruyere is the original  Swiss Cheese, and is the cheese used in Fondue.

The fabulous flavor of real Gruyere is from the variety of wild fleurs and grasses around the castle grounds.

You can visit the factory where they make the cheese, and you see them roll it on large cheese rounds, then they put cheese cloth around it, they store it  and so on. Audio tapes are in French, German and English.

You can also buy cheese to take back home. It is vacuum sealed for customs. If you do get to Gruyere, you can buy a suitcase full of cheese for about 40 bucks, instead of 400 bucks back in the US.

Then you can have a vin et fromage, like we did. I bought lilac copy paper and then used my left-handed italic calligraphy pen to hand letter (and make fleurs along the margins) of the paper and then distributed to neighbors, who were so delighted to come to this very lovely party.

You can buy genuine Gruyere in the US, but it is about 8 bucks now for a small block. I think Wisconsin is beginning to make its own Gruyere; Wisconsin dairies are now making their own form of formerly French-only cheese. I approve.

This is a garden on the grounds in the courtyard of the Chateau. It is too bad we could not find more photos from our 6 days in Europe.

Photo: Zacharie Grossen, Creative Commons, Wikipedia. The Matterhorn-Cervino is located both in Switzerland and Italy.

This is the Matterhorn. We had dinner in the Italian village of Cervino, which had many winding roads and many castle ruins by the side of the road, where the frazzled mother (moi) could be heard yelling and seen pointing out the window:

Will ya look at that castle? Oh, there's another one. Will ya look at THAT castle ruin? Hey! Will ya just look at the castle ruins?

Father pipes in and says: Just look at the damn castle.

This is a small box our daughter bought for us in a gift shop in the village of Cervinia, on the Italian side of the Matterhorn-Cervino. It was our anniversary. I can't imagine anything better than a wedding anniversary at the Matterhorn.

We had decided to drive from our base camp at Annecy to Mt. Blanc.

We took a gondola up and it was freezing (June) and icy, but beautiful.

I said, we are so near the Matterhorn  - only a few hours. We will never be this close again. I WANNA GO TO THE MATTERHORN. I whined until I got my way.

We are very glad we went.

I bought this small Dutch china Windmill in the Amsterdam airport.