Bonjour from Switzerland. We've been staying with our friends Adelio and Delphine at La Tour-de-Peliz, near Lausanne, on Lake Lèman, Switzerland. The weather has been ok, apart from a couple of half days of rain.

The first night we were there, it was raining, and this was a good enough reason as any for Delphine to make us a cheese fondue, which was great. Belinda watched carefully in the hope of replication.

As you know, Switzerland is all about cheese, chocolate, maybe some wine, a few mountains, etc. So one of the first things we did was went to a chocolate factory called Cailler, in Broc (in the mountains). Cailler is now owned by nestle, but the Cailler brand still make chocolate from fresh milk rather than milk powder that is used for the rest of the nestle brand. Anyhow, this factory was much more generous than the Lindt one at Cologne, Germany. For starters, entry was FREE, not 6 euros per person, and you have free reign of the tasting room. That means you go into the room, theres a heap of chocolate laid out in rows on the bench, and you can eat however much of whichever you like. They actually left the room and left us to our own devices, not like Cologne which had a surly staff member dipping wafers in melted chocolate (that was just ones they couldn't sell) and handing out one per person. And Cailler had actual guides for the factory and the shop was a discounted factory outlet not an overpriced tourist rip off. SO, we probably ate too much chocolate.

From the chocolate factory, we went to a cheese factory in Gruyère. This was a little less generous, but it was a good display of how they have made the famous cheese for centuries.

Next day, we hired bikes from Delphine, who works at the train station, and cycled around the lake. We got as far as Saint Gingolph, which is actually France. By that time the weather was looking bad and we turned around. Dave was being an idiot and trying to scare Belinda by racing up from behind. Lets just say the front brakes work really good.

In the pouring rain that afternonn, we decided to conduct our own wine tour and went to Grandveaux, where they were having a wine label competition. We met some locals, tasted some wine (alot cheaper than a tour would have been) and became celebrities. People kept asking us how we knew about the do, and how we got there, if Dave plays Rugby, where we go next, etc, etc.

The other thing we did here was go to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne. It was good, with special displays about the Beijing Olympics, and, surprisingly, still quite a slant towards the Sydney Olympics.

Next stop is Zermatt, where we're going to see the Matterhorn. Then its onto Italy.