Day Twenty Six

France: St Tropez

Wednesday 30th July



Eau de Toilette

We woke early as we had decided to take a drive through the coastal resorts that border St Tropez and then up over the mountains and into the heart of Provence, to visit the famous perfume town of Grasse. The coastal road was magnificent, the beaches and coves that surround St Tropez radiating cote d’azur beauty and making for an inspiring journey.

We arrived in Grasse as the sun beat down, first stop the shown room of Fragonard. We’d both been here several times before and so decided to skip the free walk through the history of perfume and scent manufacturing, presented to all visitors, heading instead straight for the shop to bag some elusive designer fragrances. As you walk into the tasting room (ok smelling room, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it) your senses are overwhelmed by a plethora of scents that waft through the air. Top notes of citrus, middle notes of lavender and jasmine and bottom notes of musk and amber, delight your senses, stirring distant memories.

Trying to identify your own particular scent preference, in amongst all the fragrances of the world, is almost impossible. However, after spraying each and every visible part of our bodies Ian and I had identified the fragrances that awoke our senses. Our noses tiring (to the untrained nose your brain begins to confuse scents after a while) we attempted to wash off the scents of Fragonard, the aim being to have a fresh testing ground for the next perfume house, Galimard (it didn’t really work, the scents just diffusing into the pores of your skin).

Neither of us had been to Galimard before and I was keen to test it out. Taking the obligatory free tour of the perfume factory, we had within 5 minutes worked out how to get to the shop at the end of the tour and signalling to each other, we sneaked down a stair well as the guide looked the other way. Feeling like 2 naughty school children, we had cut out the Galimard indoctrination tour and were now in the the tasting shop. Galimard was definitely at the cheaper end of the market, the scents not being as diverse, the packaging frilly and fussy, all very different from the aluminium and designer packaging of the Fragonard perfume house. Ian did however, spy some industrial sized carafes of our favourites scents, lemon and grapefruit (funny how we both love this) and at factory prices we could not resist the temptation to stock up. I was beaten to the pay counter by a coach party of Croatians, each buying a single soap all herding together like sheep (or Japanese tourists), they were clearly used to queuing, complete masters of the old elbow routine.

Our noses now exhausted, we decided that Fragonard was still leaps ahead of the competition and so headed back to the Fragonard tasting shop to pick up out our new found signature scents, beaming like little boys in a candy shop of the senses. Now stocked up with all manner of scents and lotions and the heat of the day wearing down on us, we jumped into the air conditioned luxury of Priscilla, driving back to back to St Tropez for a very late lunch and a swim on our campsite, rounding our final full day on the Cote D’azur off with a BBQ and some SVB (surprise surprise)!