House of Switzerland

I plan to go to many of the free events and exhibits that will be taking over the city as part of the Olympics. Friday I went to my first one with some coworkers.


We traveled on the temporary Olympic line between the Olympic village and Granville Island. It is really quite slow and travels right alongside the street the 84 bus goes on, which I took all last term to UBC. But hey, at least it is free.

The inside is pretty narrow.

It was the opening of the House of Switzerland in the Bridges restaurant on Granville Island.

At the doorway was a Inukshuk made out of chocolate although it looked like some glue had been involved.

Inside there was a demonstration of making Swiss chocolates although it was hard to see what was going on because it was so packed.

Although we got there around the time it was supposed to open it was quite hard to get a table. After standing around for half an hour we managed to grab a table.

We bought a plate of Switzerland style appetizers that were alright and we had some Red Wine from Switzerland, although my Swiss coworker claims that the region of Switzerland that the wine came from doesn't get much sun. When he was ordering the waiter said "Dude, you'll have to speak in English", although I think my coworker was just saying the name of the dish. There didn't seem to be many Swiss people working there. When we ordered bread they immediately brought us a new bill with bread added on, $1 a slice. It was ridiculous.

People came around and gave out little tiny Swiss chocolate bars, packets of Ricola, and some packages of healthy tasting Swiss crackers. I also got a pin.

On the way out I got a small box of Lindt chocolates that were a limited edition milk chocolate with inner white chocolate.

After leaving we went to the Granville Island tap house for some much cheaper alcohol and then after that some of us went to a fish cafe near the entrance to Granville island which was pretty good. It was my boss' birthday but he had shown up just as we were leaving the packed Switzerland house. The place was alright but I hope to visit some exhibits in the coming weeks that have more entertainment and perhaps less people, if I go during the day on the weekday and more than just the Swiss house is open. This place opened quite early.