We celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary on August 19, 2009 with a quick trip to the south-west (mostly French-speaking) region of Switzerland. Special thanks to United Airlines for the promotional fares to Geneva. Our excursion began with a couple of days in Lausanne, beautifully situated on the banks of Lake Geneva (or Lac Leman to you French speakers).
However, we did not spend much time at the lake. We spent most of our first full day on...
...the Chocolate train! No, the train is not made of chocolate--it's a regular train (with fancy old-fashioned Pullman cars) that takes its happy riders up into the mountains to see a genuine Calliers/Nestle chocolate factory, complete with tasting! 
The chocolate train also made a stop in Gruyeres, which as you all know is famous for its cheese. You can see a few wheels of it above in the back of the delivery van. Incidentally, we didn't have any "Swiss" cheese on our trip (the kind with the holes), but all our hotels served Gruyere and Brie at breakfast. In case you wondered...
Gruyeres itself is a walled city on a hill and is protected from tourists by a castle. Here we see Liz strolling through the castle gardens.
Here is the lovely Mrs. Weddle, with a view of the local meadows.
And here you see the village of Gruyeres from a distance--impenetrable, except by tour bus.
There is not much else to say about Lausanne. We really didn't see much of the city, since Liz was suffering from a cold and we were recovering from the long flight. The real fun was yet to come, as we departed for the mountains the next morning.
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