Francophile in the West

Earlier this month, four of us from the Korbel Crew spent a Sunday exploring Gruyères, in the mountains North-Northeast of Montreux, about a 90 minute drive from Geneva. We rented a car for the day and were 'oooh'-ing and 'ahhhh'-ing as we made our way there. Gruyères is gorgeous, as is the area surrounding it. I very highly recommend the trip if you're in the region of Lake Geneva! Our first stop was the Cailler chocolate factory, ten minutes outside of Gruyères in a small town called Broc. For only 6 CHF, we went on an amusing, if historically inaccurate, interactive tour of the history of the Cailler chocolate company and of chocolate in Switzerland. The best part came at the end... The room will a buffet table of chocolates and unlimited tastings!! Even though it was only 11:30am, we gorged ourselves on the samples. I only went around the table once, but I definitely could have eaten more than I did, haha. Their dark chocolates were inventive and delicious!

Since I work full-time during the week at the UN, my weeknights are ususally really relaxed; cook dinner, maybe do some reading, catch up with Kris and my family, and go to bed as early as I can stand to. I have found that the key to working full-time and staying sane is to adventure relentlessly on one's days off. Fortunately, in Switzerland, this is easy to do, and I have been having so much fun exploring the region, both by myself and with my classmates.  Last weekend, my classmate Kate and I visited Lausanne for the day on Sunday, and the previous day, I went on a solo adventure across the French border to Ferney-Voltaire. The weather was great all weekend, and both adventures were grand! Lausanne (Sunday) Lausanne is a beautiful city. Kate and I took the train there without too much of a plan in mind, and we had a great day wandering all over town. We checked out the Old Town area, the Cathedral, the huge park on the hill at the top of town, and even walked all the