Cheese and a journey to the Jura (Days 22 & 23)

It's been great fun reconnecting with our good friend Nils from Victoria while we've been here in la Suisse. Having lived in Vancouver for the last 2 years, we've not had a lot of opportunity to spend time with Nils, and we look forward to that changing when we all get back to Victoria. He is doing some pro bono work at the WHO in Geneva (the health organization, not the rock band), and he came for his second visit to Vevey this past weekend. We met him down at the market on Saturday morning, looked around a bit, did some shopping, and went to the lake for a swim (it was tres chaud). Previously, Nils had offered to look after Lucia and Elias if we ever wanted to get out for a bit of time on our own and so we took him up on his offer in the evening.




We couldn't come all the way to Switzerland and not have a bonafide Swiss cheese fondue, so Saturday night saw Danielle and I looking around in Vevey for a place to find the real thing. Our guide book was little help (Vevey gets little mention) but after looking at the menus of a few random restaurants Danielle asked, and got, directions to a small restaurant that served exactly what we were looking for (Les Trois Sifflets; translation, the three whistles, I think). It's a small place, with a little courtyard in behind, and our table was right beside a fountain made of two wine barrels of different sizes, cut in half. The temperature outside was perfect. Even when the sun had gone down, we were still warm.









Thanks to Nils, who has indulged in cheese fondue at least once during his time here, we had the good advice to not order more than one fondue between the two of us. Our stomachs were telling us differently when we were ordering, but our minds prevailed, which was a good thing. We prefaced our cheese-fest with a couple of salads and then began indulging in the gooey mixture of Gruyere and Vacherin cheese, kirsch and who-knows-what-else. Heavenly.

Make no mistake - there's a lot of cheese in that orange pot. We had no trouble finishing it off, but I'm glad we kept to our limits. It might have been the red wine from Valais (the region to the east of Lac Leman) that helped, but neither of us had the stomach-ache that we half expected afterwards. The walk under the stars beside the lake after dinner completed our night out sans children perfectly. This was an evening that I'm sure we will reminisce about for years to come. (Thanks again, Nils.)





An area of Switzerland that we had not really ventured into, but have been interested in, is called "the Jura". It's an area of rolling hills, lakes, and smaller mountains - not the rocky ones that you see on typical Swiss post cards - north of Lake Geneva, bordering France. From what we'd read, it sounded like it doesn't draw nearly the same number of tourists as other regions but is every bit as beautiful. Fortunately, Nils has an appreciation for getting off the beaten track as well, and we easily agreed on a day trip to go exploring. A spot in particular that sounded really nice (according to our book as well as Colette, Corinne's step-mom who we chatted with briefly before going) was le Vallee de Joux, so off we went with a general idea of where we wanted to go but an open agenda as to how we'd get there. The pictures above and below were taken at Lac de Joux, a picture-perfect spot that we came to where we took a stroll and had a bite to eat.

During the drive, Nils told us stories about how his family had cycled through Europe together when he was thirteen. A stop at a patisserie was a daily ritual, and him and his sister would bike up ahead to the next town, find the resting spot, and wait for their parents to arrive. Driving through the countryside in the Jura, with its small villages, rolling hills, and narrow roads, and hearing these cycling stories from Nils, made me hope that similar sorts of travel will lie in our family's future. (Perhaps with hiking shoes instead of pedals under our feet?)

There are countless fountains around this area like the one Elias is standing next to in the photo above. While we ate lunch, he dipped his hand in, looked, and dipped it in again. Timely distraction. The swimmer to the right of the large mass of weeds in the water is Nils. I told him I'd give him 50 centimes (~$0.45 CDN) if he'd jump right into the middle of the weeded area and swim through them. He did it. (I didn't actually have 50 centimes on me at the time, so I guess I owe him.)

Before we had left, I had read about a town in the area around le Vallee de Joux called Vallorbe. Just outside this town, there was apparently a network of caves that had been made "tourist-friendly" and were worth visiting. I dropped the word "caves" and Lucia was immediately determined to go. We were able to make the trip to Vallorbe part of our drive and when we got to the caves, we decided that I would take her in and Nils, Danielle and Elias would go explore the trails outside.

What you see above is what the passageways in the cave looked like - easily accessible but still natural in appearance. Unfortunately, my photos do little justice to what it was like inside. The "circuit" that we walked through is supposedly ~1 km and it was a bit chilly and wet, but fascinating. Plenty of stalactites and stalagmites to look at, as well as pools of water and an underground river.

Lucia was a bit nervous and held my hand pretty tightly while we were inside but was very excited to tell Mommy all about it when we came out. Kids' memories can seem so random. For me, seeing these caves was definitely a special and unusual occasion. I wonder if this experience will register as one of Lucia's memories of this trip? What other things will she remember? Feeding the turtles? Looking at the mice the cat caught? The boat ride to France? Nathan and Romain's Playmobil? Swimming in Lac Leman? I do look forward to finding out...but definitely hope that our time here will have left an impression as to how life looks in a different part of the world.