This morning we are visiting the Charlie Chaplin Museum in Vevey. The British actor lived here from 1952 until his death in 1977, after the FBI revoked his visa to return to the United States during a trip to Europe. At that time, the US government was in the early stages of the Cold War and was just as paranoid and hysterical as it is today, and anyone who did not conform to its conservative ideas was immediately considered a communist and an enemy of the state.

Overall, we learn a lot about Charlie Chaplin in the museum that we didn’t know before – from the poverty-stricken circumstances in which he grew up in London to the film music he composed himself, for which he received an Oscar, in addition to two honorary Oscars for his life’s work. Above all, here in the museum we get to know Charlie Chaplin as a family man. Several rooms show family videos of him with his half-brother Sydney, his wife Oona and his eight children. As soon as the camera captures him, he becomes a joker, pulling faces, stumbling, looking around theatrically or otherwise fooling around. The tour of the house is rounded off by several really well-made statues that depict him or famous friends, such as Albert Einstein in the bathroom, in a very lifelike manner.

We enter the studio through an adjoining building. In the small cinema, we watch a ten-minute film about Charlie Chaplin before stepping through the screen and into the film itself. We walk through the street of ‘The Tramp’, one of his most iconic roles. From here, we move on to many other scenes and excerpts, in which you can often participate yourself. Props from Charlie Chaplin’s films are also on display here, along with two of his three Oscars and other awards, letters, contracts and the like. It’s really well done.

In the meantime, LucY has charged up in the car park and is ready to continue the journey. We follow the wine route through the vineyards of Lavaux to the next photo stop. The grape harvest is currently underway in several places. Large, almost black grapes are being harvested and transported to the wineries in large crates. Here, it really seems as though life revolves entirely around wine.

Our next stop is the port of Morges with its charming two guardhouses, the ‘Guérites’. Located right next to the castle, it was the most important trading port on Lake Geneva at the end of the 17th century.

We stop for lunch at the motorway service station. There is a Popeyes branch here, Gaby’s favourite place for crispy chicken pieces and chips.

Then it’s back to the shores of Lake Geneva. In Rolle, the photo spot shows a small island, formerly part of a dam built to protect the boats in the harbour from the wind.

Rolle is our southwesternmost stop. We skip the small detour to Geneva and drive from here via the motorway to the next stop. But even the Creux du Van, a natural rock arena similar to American canyons, with 160-metre-high rock faces, is shrouded in clouds and cannot be seen from the photo spot.

This brings our Grand Tour of Switzerland almost to an end. We skip the route around Lake Neuchâtel and Lake Murten and the loop around Gruyères and the Bernese Oberland and head home. But we make two more stops. Gabi has pre-ordered a Nidelkuchen cake in Murten, which we pick up in the charming Zähringer town. We really like it here, with the arcades in the old town, which are a little wider than in Bern and are used as outdoor areas for shops on one side and restaurants on the other.

We are fortunate at our last stop in Fribourg, another Zähringer town. Just as we set off again, it starts to rain. And it pours down as we drive along the motorway. But even so, the return journey goes smoothly. We are back home, enriched by many experiences and impressions from our beautiful Switzerland.