Awaken your senses

Seeing as we were in the perfume region of France, and probably the world, we had to visit some perfume factories. Thus we made our way to two of the most well-known fragrance houses in France, Molinard and Fragonard.

Traditional methods of drying flower petals

Both run factory tours on a daily basis and as most of the visitors tend to be French, we were rather the odd couple there. The tours were fairly interesting however since we have already been to the L’Occitane factory tour, some of the content were rather similar. For one of the fragrance houses (can’t remember which one), they actually didn’t have a resident ‘Nose’ instead they reply on freelancers. When they want to create a new fragrance, they use something like a tender/ bidding process so they can select the best fragrance out there. There is only one school, ISIPCA, in the world for budding perfumers to attend, as past perfumers usually enter the trade through apprenticeships. Of course the most exciting or fun part about the tour was when we get to go to the retail shop and smell all the lovely perfumes!!! The array of perfumes, body lotions etc were a bit overwhelming and since I had already gone crazy at L’Occitane, I thought it was best to practice some restraint and only bought some face creams.

Where the nose gets to work 

After a fairly educational morning, we visited the Villa & Jardins Ephrussi de Rothschild as I had read that the gardens were simply beautiful and it was a must-see.

Jardin Ephrussi de Rothschild

The exterior of the villa was painted pink which sounds hideous but is actually not too bad in real-life. The interiors were also beautifully decorated, and while the villa looked small from the outside, there were enough rooms to keep you occupied. It was quite modern for its time, with attached bathrooms and bathtubs for each room and also a telephone. There were even 2 stuffed animals in her bedroom! However, we were here for the gardens and that’s what we did.

Inside the Villa

There are a total of 8 different themed gardens, French, Spanish, Florentine Stone, Japanese, Exotic, Provencal and Rose, and it was wonderful to walk through them.  The flowers were in bloom and it felt like we were walking through a very lovely bottle of perfume. The view of the coastline was also gorgeous and we could spy other mansions from where we were. All in all, a really wonderful way to end our day and also our time in Nice!

In the Gardens

Nicely nice

After the excitement of the tennis matches the day before, we decided to take it easy the next day and woke up on a lazy Saturday to visit the famous markets of Nice. There are quite a few markets and I actually can’t remember which ones we visited, suffice to say they were full of character and it was quite fun wandering around looking at the various produce. Nice is one of those places in Europe which is blessed with a lovely Mediterranean climate, thus very suitable for growing all kinds of lovely flowers, fruits and vegetables.

Spices and fruits

We managed to wander down to the beach, which was seriously not that difficult, and find a place that wasn’t yet over-run by the locals in search of brunch on a Saturday. The beach looked lovely and though the sun was out, I thought the sea breeze made it a little too chilly for sunbathing though the locals certainly didn’t think so. And in case you are wondering, yes there were people who went topless. The beach didn’t look that crowded though, probably because it was still April and not peak season yet.

Soaking in the sun
(what may seem like a full cafe usually has empty seats inside)

Spot the topless lady

We ended up whiling the day away just wandering the streets and up a hill to Parc du Chateau. Its a public garden 92m up with panoramic views of the city. We also managed to locate the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, which is supposed to be an architectural sight to behold. It was a little difficult to find and was kind of hidden from view amongst the various residential houses around, only when you are actually right in front of it do you realize that its there. There was a service when we were there so we could only take a little peek at the interiors. It was seriously quite beautiful and since we didn’t want to interrupt or be rude, we only took a short peek and left. The grounds were huge and there were some Russian families with their kids just hanging out and playing. As the cathedral is kind of isolated from the rest of the area due to the huge grounds, it can feel a little like you are actually in Russia itself. Pretty lovely to just sit on one of the benches and take in the architecture. Apparently there is some ownership dispute going on over the property, you can read all about it here and here. I think the French are just taking it in their very French way which is probably the best way of managing it.

Cétait bien!

We finished the day walking down the Promenade des Anglais and thought that Nice was c'était bien!

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!

On the trail of Van Gogh - Part 1

Since we were in the south of France, we obviously had to go to Provence with its lovely fields of lavender and wonderful scenery. The one thing we forgot to check though was the period of the lavender season, which is apparently in July so we were about 2 months early, haha… It wasn’t a big loss though cos the scenery was still breath-taking and there was the added bonus of less tourists around so everything was a lot more pleasant.

Our first stop was the town of Arles where we visited its weekend market. It’s kind of like our pasar malam but they sell vegetables, meat etc on top of the usual assortment of cooked food and clothes. The clothes and bags are all along one section while the cooked food, vegetables, meat and fruit in another all along the road. The roads were packed with cars and trucks, so it was a little crazy to get parking. As it was a clear, sunny morning, everything just looked fabulous. We bought some strawberries to eat but unfortunately they didn’t taste as good as they looked.

Beautiful produce

We also walked around the town for a short while and managed to find the café terrace which Van Gogh made famous in his painting ‘Café Terrace at Night’. It’s now renamed as Café Van Gogh and there were tourists inside taking photos. We contended ourselves with pictures from the outside cos we had a more important place to visit, the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence where Van Gogh stayed in after the infamous ear-severing incident.

Before making our place to the asylum, which is just outside the town of Saint-Remy-de-Provence, we stopped by for some sustenance. Lunch was a simple affair at a family-run restaurant and I had the best fish soup ever! The French fish soup is different from our Chinese ones, it was creamy and you eat it with cheese and bread. Luckily CS didn’t like the taste of it so I could devour it all by myself. We also stopped by a free museum about perfume making, it was rather non-descript so we took a while to find it. Though it was quite small, it was informative and we did learn quite a few things.

Totoros, lost in Provence

Hardly looks like an asylum

We finally arrived at the asylum and being typically blur, we ended up in the real asylum, lol… The old asylum had been preserved so that admirers of Van Gogh can visit it, we just didn’t expect that there would be a modern version still running. We did wonder why it looked so modern but didn’t think any more of it, luckily the staff were kind enough to point us to the right direction. Though it was an asylum, there was a sense of peace and the scenery was absolutely amazing. There were lovely flowers and their scents perfumed the surroundings.

Stopping to smell the flowers

The place had copies of his paintings all over with a small write-up on the pieces which were quite helpful. There were also articles to explain how care was provided for the patients during Van Gogh’s time, which were quite educational and also shows how far we have come along since. For instance, water therapy where the patient was placed in a tub of water used to be quite common, this would not be done today.

Olive trees

Exquisite surroundings

After leaving the asylum, we made our way to Roussillon as the tourist office had highly recommended it. The red cliffs and ochre quarries were supposed to be a sight to behold but alas we were too late and couldn’t enter the park. We stumbled onto a house that was being built so we drove in to get a closer look at the cliffs however the owner of the house appeared and told us it was ‘private property’ so we had to leave, sigh… From the little that we managed to see, it did look rather pretty, too bad we had to arrive late. Here are some pictures of what we managed to take, and there are still more areas to explore in Provence!

Red Cliff (no, not that one)

City of Popes

Since we had already been to Rome and visited Vatican City, we thought it would be a good idea to also visit ‘the other Vatican’, which was Avignon.

Avignon hosts an annual famous theatre festival with 800 productions on show

In the history of the Catholic Church, which is definitely long and colorful, they had a period where the Pope resided in France and not Italy as per tradition. This caused a schism within the Church and also resulted in two Popes in two different cities from 1378 to 1423. The whole history is a bit too much to cover here and is also not the main aim of this entry so if you are interested, here’s a link to the wonderful creation that is Wikipedia.

One of the remaining structures from the time of Papal Avignon was the Palais Des Papes aka Vatican City II. My expectations were probably a little high but it was not as grand as I imagined it to be. Then again when the Pope moved back to Italy he probably brought everything back with him. It may have looked very grand during its day but now it looks pretty normal and is just a really large building with almost nothing inside. I did think it was rather good to play hide and seek there though since it did seem to have lots of hiding places and the grounds are quite huge.

Inside the church

We also visited Pont Saint Benezet, which is supposed to be a famous monument and a beloved song. We don’t know anything about it though and since it was super windy that day, we didn’t go up onto the bridge. In any case, there is a better view of the bridge by looking at it and not being on it, lol…

A humorous temporary sculpture by Miquel Barceló

Trailing a school excursion

Other than Avignon, we also visited the nearby town of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. It was a much smaller town than Avignon and we went to the La Chartreuse du Val de Benediction. It was rather empty when we were there so it was a little creepy. It was also very quiet which I guess suited its purpose as a monastery. It owes its beginnings to Pope Innocent VI and he requested to be buried there when he died (usually popes are buried in St Peters Basilica in Rome). Currently it serves as an artists’ residence and they can stay there rent-free if I remember correctly. Pretty peaceful place for some meditation and wonderful art perhaps.

Medieval tower

Fantastic dinner in Avignon

All in all, Avignon was much prettier in my head than in reality, but then again which other city can claim to be a papal home before, eh?

Aint no mountain high enough

As stated in our previous entry, the next mountain for us to conquer was Mont Blanc in Charmonix. Well to be honest, we didn’t actually conquer it, we took a cable car ride up, lol…

Mont Blanc

Ski season lasts pretty long for the ‘roof of Europe’ aka Mont Blanc. There were lots of people going up Mount Blanc for skiing and they looked pretty serious with all their gear like ice picks, axes and stuff. There were loads of warnings about how dangerous the slopes are and how the ski paths are neither groomed, marked nor patrolled, which seemed quite ominous. Everyone who was skiing looked super geared up so I assume they know the risks involved. You know it's serious stuff when the brochure has a note: "Bring GPS locator beacon".

Beginning of the treacherous ski down

Once you are up on Mont Blanc, you can actually take another cable car ride to Italy, which we didn’t do as that cable car looked way too scary for me. The views on Mont Blanc were great though and we had quite a lot of fun staring at the people skiing on the slopes. One guy wanted to do paragliding but there wasn’t enough wind for himto jump off. Aiguille du Midi which is where people ski and apparently paraglide is 3,842m high!!! It’s already freaky enough for me to be up that height, can you imagine jumping off a slope that high? Yikes!

Dreamy view

We had read about how the cablecar journey up can ‘make your heart leap’ but it was so jam-packed with people I could hardly see anything and so there was no leaping in my heart ascending. The journey back down was a whole different story however, the cable car kind of went freefalling for a while, which totally freaked me out. I think I gave a pretty loud gasp but then again almost everyone in the cable car did the same. CS said having that alone was worth the money we paid for the cable car journey, haha.

That's where little elves make Mont Blanc pens!

After all the leaping hearts, we decided a good meal was needed to restore ourselves back to vitality and thus we headed off to Lyon, gastronomical capital of France, for some lunch. We picked a restaurant in a guide-book and while the brasserie looked pretty impressive, the food was nothing to shout about. The escargots were pretty good, though honestly anything with garlic herb butter is bound to taste good. It seems like we have to get away from the big cities to get any decent food. Luckily we were heading to the Provence region next so beautiful scenery and hopefully good food awaits us there!

Escargot in garlic herb butter

Fancy a glass of champagne?

After OD-ing on museums in Paris, we thought it would be good to indulge in some champagne tastings instead and off we went to Reims.

As everyone knows, champagne is only produced in a particular area of France, all other bubbly wine has to be called something else, i.e sparkling wine, prosecco, basically anything other than champagne. We decided to visit Moet & Chandon and Tattinger, two champagne houses in Epernay and Reims.

Crazy underground network of wine cellars

(stays at a constant temperature of 10-12 celsius throughout the year)

We visited Moet & Chandon first, and as expected, the set-up was pretty impressive. We had to reserve the tour in advance but we lost our way and turned up a little late so we missed most of the corporate video and instead started in the cellars. Our guide was a French lady who took a while to warm up to the group but overall she was a rather good guide. It was a small group (6 only) but they were a fun bunch with lots of jokes and interesting facts shared. So back to school and some of things we learnt.

• Three different types of grapes are used to make champagne, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are white grapes whereas Pinot Meunier is red. Though Pinot Meunier is red, it produces white wine! And I’ve always thought only white grapes produce white wine and that champagne is only made from white grapes. Its the skin of red grapes which makes it red.
• Vintage champagne is made only with grapes from a certain year. This depends on the champagne maker’s decision and the grapes obviously have to be very good that year for him to make that decision. Most of the champage available is actually a mixture of grapes from different years.
• The bubbles in champagne is a result of natural fermentation occurring in the bottle and not as a result of injection of carbon dioxide in the wine. I can almost hear the sneer in the guide’s voice when she said this.

Endless rows of maturing wine

• The champagne bottles need to be turned to allow the sediment to settle (the sediment is the yeast they inject to interact with the wine to create the bubbles). They still turn some by hand but most are turned by machines now.
• To remove the sediment, they freeze it at the bottle neck and the pressure within the bottle will pop the iced sediment out, plug it with a cork and still retain enough pressure for us to pop it at home.
• Champagne just like wine needs to be aged before drinking. There is a French authority which regulates the minimum number of months the champagne must be aged before it can be sold, minimum of 18 months for normal champagne and 36 months for vintage champagne. The champagne bottles are left to age in the cellars of the respective champagne houses, so there are literally thousands of champagne bottles underground in that particular region in France!!! The cellars are all next to each other so the champagne houses actually can’t really expand any further. Oh the cellars are actually quite gross and for some of the bottles, the layer of dust on them is quite unbelievable.

Be fabulous like Scarlett Johansson

(she hosted a dinner in the wine cellar!)

After the tour, we had our tasting of the champagne! Hehe… just what we were waiting for. We had paid to drink 2 types of champagne, the normal one and the rose one. Both of us preferred the normal champagne and it was really easy to drink. Oh Moet and Chandon and Dom Perignon belong to the same company but brewed at different places, so if you can't afford Dom Perignon, you can still buy Moet, hehe...

Hello, Mr Perignon

The next day, we visited Tattinger. This tour didn’t require any reservation so there were quite a lot of people. It felt a bit like they were herding sheep actually. The guide was rather friendly but most of the info was the same as Moet so nothing new to learn. The set up wasn’t as impressive as Moet I must say, but apparently their cellars were bigger than Moet. Strangely enough, we have not heard of them before, but then again we are not exactly big champagne drinkers. We had the champagne tasting again after the tour (just one glass this time) and we both preferred the Moet one instead as that just tasted smoother.

Other than getting drunk on champagne, we also visited the Notre Dame in Reims. Yes, there is a Notre Dame in Reims, and apparently there is a Notre Dame in almost every city in France, think it’s a bit like Duomos in Italy, haha… Apparently the kings of France were once crowned there, so the interior is quite amazing with quite lovely stained glass windows. The exterior is also quite a sight, towering large cathedral with loads and loads of statues and statuettes.

Interior of the coronation cathedral

Exterior

All in all, Reims was quite enjoyable, and of course the champagne definitely helped, hehe…

More Museums, Cathedrals, and a River Cruise and Shakespeare!

On our last day in Paris, the weather was just as wonderful as the first day, and of course we had a few more places to conquer.

Musee Lourve - of course we went here, as if I will miss this for the world. CS was more excited about the queue at the Apple store for the iPad 2, lol... The sale of iPad2 only started at 5pm and will only be released then so there were no display sets for him to play with. With our wonderful museum pass, we zoomed past all the queues, woo hoo! The Lourve is seriously big, you can spend a whole day there, heck probably a week and still not see everything. As we were on limited time, we skipped through most of the exhibits and did the major ones, like Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Coronation of Napoleon etc. We used the audio guide which was quite good, though on hindsight, we should have joined one of the guided tours. I must say that Mona Lisa is NOT that small at the end of the day, though the crowd to see her was obviously quite crazy. Still worth a look no matter what people say.

IM Pei's Glass Pyramid

It's really not as small as it looks!

Amazing! Amazing how many people there are....

Welcoming us to Egypt!

Tourists just snapping away..

Shakespeare and Co - oh how can I come all the way to Paris and not come here! Ever since I watched Before Sunset, I decided I have to go to the bookshop if I ever made my way to Paris and it was every bit as charming as I thought it would be. It's the kind of bookshop I would love to own/ work in if I ever have the chance. The whole place just has books, books and books stacked all over and you can probably spend the whole day on the second floor if you wanted to. People probably come here cos of Ernest Hemmingway, I'm shallower than that, I came here to feel Ethan Hawke/ Julie Delphy, haha.

The famous storefront!

Books galore!

Sainte Chapelle - this was a nightmare to get into, there was a long queue and it seemed like there was no proper queuing system. There were a few people who jumped queue and we waited quite a while to get in, this was actually the first place we had to queue to enter even though we bought the museum pass. The church itself is quite small though the stained glass is really quite spectacular, BUT there was not much sun by the time we got in so they didn't look as amazing as they could have been. In any case I thought it was weird that the Justice Department is just next door as members of the public can just wander so near it. I just thought it wasn't very secure for them even though there were security checks.

The famous stained glass windows

Cathedral Notre Dame de Paris - there was some kind of concert going on just outside the cathedral so there were lots of people around. As we got there too late, we didn't manage to climb up the cathedral to stare at the gargoyles. We just walked around the church and that was it. No sightings of Quasimodo nor of Esmeralda.

No bells ringing but there was lovely blue sky

Cruise by La Seine - we did this in the evening when the museums were closed. We didn't get to see mini Statue of Liberty though I took the one that Y mentioned went there, oh well... It was totally freezing though and we did get very good views of the Eiffel Tower. We were aiming to do a Ethan Hawke/ Julie Delphy and stand at the back and talk about life but it got way too cold. Will be interesting to do this again when we are back in Paris for Roland Garros, J mentioned that the French government brings in sand and put it along the Seine river, wonder if we will manage to see that, lol...

Tour Eiffel as the French says it

The famous Arc de Triomphe

So that was our whirlwind Paris trip. Next tasting the high life in Reims!