We hopped the wonderful and very punctual Swiss train system to the towns of Montreux and Gruyere. Montreux is a lakeside town, pretty much on the opposite side of the lake as Geneva. It took about an hour to get there by train. The town is situated beautifully with rock-capped mountains fringing the lakeside; we walked the promenade to the Castle de Chillon, one of the largest castles in Switzerland, which has some history behind it that probably only the Swiss care about (something about Byron and some poem he wrote). In it's defense, the castle is actually pretty cool, and totally knocks the socks off of the studio we're staying in.
After touring the castle, we had lunch and then hopped another train to go to Gruyere, a medieval village a little northeasterly 
of Montreux. Gruyere is famous for (drumroll, please...) Gruyere cheese, although the "local butterfat-rich double cream" is pretty impressive also. On a side note, the person who designed the aliens in the Alien series was from Gruyere, and they have a themed bar and museum dedicated to his pieces - for the record, this completely does not fit in at a Swiss mountain-town. Regardless, we ate at a fondue/raclette restaurant, which could be better described as "eating as many calories as you can in one sitting", or also "totally sweet"...potatoes, sweet pickles/onions, dried meats, and bread dipped into melted cheese. And, of course, we finished that off with the double-fat-cream stuff. Overall it was a wonderful day of touring the rolling countryside and cutesy towns. More pictures can be found at shutterfly listed on the side of the blog.
Wknd Trip to Montreux and Gruyere
