Day 22 - Vevey

We bid Geneva goodbye and took the 9:00 a.m. train to Vevey, a town on the east side of Lake Geneva. To put it simply: we love Vevey. It is split up very specifically between the new town and the old city. We spent most of our time in the old historic part. A fairly quiet village with beautiful views of the Fench Alps along Lake Geneva. We found our hotel but it was too early to check in so they let us ditch our bags. We took a leisurely stroll around the old town. We picked up lunch at a burrito place. The owner said it was the first Mexican restaurant in the region (who knows?) but he was friendly and we got a great burrito that we ate on a park bench at the waterfront on a beautiful afternoon. Our chocolate tour/tasting/education was at Laderach Chocolatier, a family run business since 1962 that oversees the entire chocolate making process from beginning to end. There are farms in South American, Africa, and Indonisia that supply the beans directly to Laderach, and once they arrive in Switzerland the company begins to process the beans into chocolate treats. We learned about the process of taking the beans and turning them into cocoa butter and cocoa paste. Then we learned the process of making dark, milk and white chocolate. We tasted each and then tasted chocolate made from single origin beans. We also sampled some special chocolates made that have flavors representing different geographical areas as well as some that had thematic significance. We had the pleasure of making our own chocolate cows using molds. It was lots of fun. We have very nice accommodations tonight with our own bathroom. We had a simple dinner of salad and pasta purchased at the store and finished with a dessert of eating Ed's chocolate cow. Took an evening stroll around town. The sights were lovely and the smells intoxicating.