Barcelona to Switzerland - Lausanne, Gruyere/Broc and Bern

Gaudi is amazing! Sagrada Familia was such an incredible building. I wouldn't say it was beautiful (with the construction work it kind of looked like a cooked chicken with those paper frill things on it's drumsticks), but it was incredibly impressive. Inside it looked like an alien spaceship, with the colours from the stained glass windows making awesome light shows on the walls and ground. My favourite part was reading about how Gaudi was obsessed with patterns and shapes in nature, you can really see it in his designs around Barcelona.







We're now in Switzerland, Lausanne, staying with Yvonne and Stefan having a great time. We spent our first day looking around Lausanne's old town and going to the "beach" at Lake Geneva where we were so obviously tourists because we could not for the live of us stand on the pebbles in the water.





Yesterday we took a really fun day trip to Gruyere and Broc to see the Cailler chocolate factory. Gruyere is one of my favourite places I've ever been. It's incredibly beautiful both naturally and the town itself, and even though there are tourists everywhere it seems unspoiled by tourism like some of the other places we've been.

After taking a look at the cheese banks of Maison Gruyere, we hiked up the mountain to the Gruyere medieval town and spent some time looking around the pebbled streets and taking in the views. We stopped for a moitie moitie fondu lunch with a double cream and framboise dessert at one of the many restaurants with panoramic views. I love the idea of fondu (and raclette for the same reason) - I know it's a traditional part Swiss cuisine but it really seems like a kid came up with it! It's like what I would ask for dinner when I was 7, it's so cool to have an excuse to eat it as an adult!





Next we visited the ridiculously out of place HR Giger museum (the guy who did the art for the Alien movies) and I think we're still recovering from the experience. I'm a massive fan of the Alien movies (I used to watch them with my dad when I was little when other little girls were watching the little mermaid) so I was really looking forward to it, but I wasn't prepared for the... theme of most of his work. He was an extremely talented psychopath who was obsessed with aliens and penises. I've never seen so many penis/vagina pictures in my life! It's like he had the brain of a teenage boy, but because he was talented all his pictures of weird alien sex was extremely graphic and detailed. There were no pictures allowed but I just had to take one of this piece; honestly... penises and vaginas everywhere! There was even a bunch of paintings of women with boobs with vaginas for nipples, what the fuck HR.



We took a much needed sit down at the Alien Cafe to recover.



Yesterday afternoon we visited the Cailler chocolate factory where we ate our years allowance of chocolate. The whole town of Broc smelt like chocolate!



Today we visited Bern to see the bears which I now know are NOT a lie, and also to drink beer and eat pretzels and sausages and apfel strudel. The bears were so cool! They were really active, swimming around and having play fights. I was so excited when they were actually there, all this time I've thought it was a massive conspiracy. Lunch and beer at the Altes Tramdepot brewery was awesome, the sausage was the best sausage ever!

Yvonne and Stefan get married tomorrow!