Day 27: Nudist colonies, pedibuses and erotimechanica. This is Switzerland.

Sorry about the News of the World style headline, I'm trying to attract a larger readership ;-)
Today I got up nice and early to help walk Marianna to school; she's such a cutie.  She talked and talked and talked the whole way there, and she made sure her bat was kept nice and warm tucked away in her top. Pedibus?  yeah I had no idea until Henric explained it.  One volunteer parent is the head of the bus, one volunteer parent is the tail of the bus, and they are both holding a rope which all the kids on the bus have to hold onto.  The bus then makes it rounds, stopping at the pedibus stops to take on new passengers, and bring them all safely to school. Very cool for the first year kiddies.  Very uncool for the 2nd year and older kiddies. We walked back via the lake shore which was lined with a multitude of market gardens.

Henric and I caught up with Michelle and Cory near the nudist colony and continued our morning walk, where Matilda got harassed by a little cocker-spaniel whose owner was desperately trying to call back to her.  Ignoring her owner, that cocker-spaniel happily spent ages running circles around and around Matilda.
Packed up and moving on, we headed towards Gruyere on Cory's recommendation.

Gruyere was really amazing.  It's a beautiful medieval walled city on a hillside, surrounded by bell-wearing sheep and cows tinkling away like wind chimes.

We dropped into the HR Giger Museum Bar for a snack and drink.  Wow, I want that furniture!  And I've spoken before about the French and their dogs.  Swiss and their dogs seem to be just the same too, as a lady was sitting at the bar with her dog perched on her lap. I really wanted one of those facehugger cocktails, but as I was driving I had to pass it up, and so we made our way into the HR Giger Museum.

I actually had no idea what the museum was about, apart from its relationship to HR Giger; I only really know HR Giger from Alien and Species. The museum was not anything like what I expected, in fact I had no idea what I was expecting; it was actually very intriguing and interesting to wander around and through.  Especially the erotimechanica art.  In fact a lot of Giger's art is erotic art, and there was even an adults only red room which was a real eye opener! This guy has so much talent and creativity, such as the above fore-mentioned erotic art.  I'm not going on about that too much I hope?  As well as sculptures, prints, paintings, furniture, floor coverings, tables and chairs.  I was saddened and shocked to hear that he actually died just a couple of days before our visit from a fall.  What a loss.

Now the Giger museum was a surprise and well worth the visit on it's own, but for only a few euros more you can see the castle.  And yet again, it was not what was expected, but a pleasant surprise and certainly well worth visiting.

The castle of the Gruyeres actually has a lot of the furnishings in it, and it was quite interesting to wander through exploring and reading of the history of the Gruyeres.  Oh, they have a severed hand in a glass case.  And a lovely garden.

Also a lot of fantastic art and paintings on display as well.

We had somewhere to be though, and that somewhere was Grindelwald, so back in the car driving through the most amazing mountain scenery brought us to a bustling little town right in the middle of towering snow covered mountains.

Car parked and at our hotel, the manager didn't seem to have our reservation.  But there was a good reason for that, as we were at the wrong hotel.  Whoops, that's a bit embarrassing... Now, settled into the right hotel we had fantastic views from our rear porch, and even caught sight of a fox playing in the grass outside.  Those mountains.  So tall.  So rocky.  So snow covered.  So mountainy.  There's nothing like them back at home.

Walking through the street I even saw a snow slide on one of the mountains.  A low distant rumble, and a cascade of snow like a waterfall off the cliff edge into a valley that was out of view. We did a walk up and down the main street looking for a restaurant, even though our hotel manager had pointed out her hotel restaurant and how good it was.  But I didn't want to eat in a hotel restaurant, I wanted to go somewhere good and sort of local, not touristy. But all the restaurants in town were hotel restaurants.  Well, expect for the Indian restaurant at the far end of town, and I wasn't going to have Indian food, no matter how good it was.  I was in Switzerland!  I wanted to be trying local Swiss food!!
Well, since all the restaurants were hotel restaurants, we decided to go to our own one, and it actually was very good.  White asparagus was in season, so we chose off the white asparagus menu.  Kicked off with Campari and orange, main was the baked salmon, the best, tastiest spuds and white asparagus.  All was very good, especially when washed down with 1/2 a litre of RugenBrau. Cheers!

Oh, the severed hand?  There's a pic here with the rest of the album...