Perfumes, frescos and stars

For our second day in the region, we decided to do a factory tour and visit L’Occitane!

It was a bit out of the way, but well that’s what the car is for. The factory tour lasted for about an hour and since we were early, we managed to walk around the exhibit which was on display near the retail shop. They had some old equipment on display and explanations about the distillation process and various types of flowers/ herbs which they used in their products. Our guide was a young French girl who seemed quite new but she was quite pleasant and tried her best to give us all the information and answer our questions. It was interesting to see that almost everything was still done manually, such as bottling and packing, I had thought it would be automated. After the tour, we obviously had to buy some stuff, I must confess I went a little crazy and spent way way more than I should have, but then again who can resist all those lovely bottles of body lotions, creams, face masks etc?

They rollout a new product every 2 weeks!

After buying stuff like crazy, we decided to soak in a little small town atmosphere and visited Aix-en-Provence. Cezanne had stayed there but we didn’t know much him and so did not visit his studio or house, instead we just walked around the town. It was a beautiful day so it was nice to walk around and soak in the sun. We popped into the church for a look-see and also wandered down the Cours Mirabeau. I bought some macaroons to eat and though they are more delicious than what you can get in Singapore, somehow I still don’t really like them all that much. Aix was also famous for its fountains but we weren’t in the mood to hunt down all of them and only looked for the famous ones.

Beautiful fresco in the church

After the long day, we made our way to Nice, passing Cannes along the way. Honestly, from the road, Cannes looked decidedly dingy, it's kind of hard to imagine it as the place where the stars come out to play. They must have some hidden beach or resort stashed somewhere else cos it certainly didn’t look anything like what I imagined it to be. In any case, we arrived at Nice and spent our first night at a youth hostel!!!

Totoros in Cannes? Perhaps not their first time.

Our original plan was to stay at Monte Carlo but prices there were sky-high so Nice was the next best place to stay in. Prices were still high though so in the end we had to stay at a youth hostel. I had stayed in one years ago while CS had never stayed in one, so it was definitely an experience for him. The hostel we were staying in was huge and thus packed to the brim. It certainly took a while to get used to rowdy teenagers, luckily we had booked a private room otherwise I think I may just die. The good thing was there was a kitchen so we could prepare dinner and stuff. It did turn out to be a pretty good stay, noisy teenagers at night not withstanding. Most importantly, it was a perfect location for our next stop, Monte Carlo!