Jamie originally was the one to suggest the French Riviera, and although I was interested, it was the proximity to Grasse that sold me. Grasse is the top perfumery location in the world, it houses most of the big names (or used to, they all have stores/museums there but some of the manufacturing has been moved) and France is known for having the best and most "noses" in the business. I can't remember if I ever mentioned it on the blog, but when I was in college and completing my Chemistry Degree I realized my Junior year that I would need either a specialty or further education (bachelors tended to be lab rats and I wanted to design the experiments) and I started looking into becoming a flavor chemist, it was my first choice. After a bit of research it takes a PhD program and then 7 year apprenticeship until you can practice!! So I went with the Food Science minor that took an extra semester and ended up loving Product Development, but always enjoyed talking to the flavor chemists and found them so interesting.
We took a trip to the International Perfumery Museum.
They had samples of the plants they used, this is a vanilla plant with a bean. They used to have fields of Lavendar and many of the raw materials in the area.
They had some cute interactive kid exhibits where you could smell the different scents, she liked the strawberry but did not like the licorice.
This was one of my favorite areas, after they walked you through the history and raw materials - they let you see the distillery process and science. This part of the museum left such an impression on me (this is a tangent but I wanted to make sure I wrote it down to remind myself). I have found since I have switched jobs that sometimes I look around and think to myself - I don't make my own repurposed clothes, paint cute and funky furniture, throw massively creative parties and I barely know how to use my camera... I even find myself thinking while browsing Pintrest "Can't I just buy that at Target?" and "That is cute but where would I store it after the party?". My mother is extremely talented and creative (she has a degree in Art and Watercolor) so the basics have rubbed off a bit, and it isn't to say I don't enjoy sewing or making Hadley's bows from time to time - but I wouldn't claim it as a talent or a passion. But I walked into the room with the GC Mass Spectrometer and lab benches filled with pipettes, beakers and test tubes and I couldn't help but smile. I felt at home, I was so excited. I realized I had just forgotten that we all have talents/interests, just sometimes they may not be in use and go in and out of season during out lives. I wouldn't trade being home with Hadley for anything, but I think I will give myself a little bit more permission to not make amazing home decorations and plan on being the Mom that is more excited about the Science Fair that her kids.
View overlooking Grasse
We then stopped by the Mattise Museum, just like the Picasso it was an exhibit that showed the progression of the artist. He is known for evoking form with just a line, and he had some works where you could see he did the detailed sketch and then went over it trying out different lines to get the same effect. They had a huge area where he did his final work, although to be honest it looked a bit like construction paper cut out by kids, so I didn't quite catch the vision, but it was very interesting. They told us that many of the well known artists would come down to the Riviera to retire and get back to basics, I can understand with the amazing scenery and weather!
This was one of my favorite parts of the day - the bakery!! We tried out a few and found an amazing one just up the street. We would go in the morning to get breakfast - eating a warm baguette smothered with fresh butter and apricot jam with a cold Orangina on the beach is just absolute perfection. And then in the afternoon we would return and get dessert for the evening, so delicious. There were little sandwich shops up and down the beaches so we tended to have sandwiches for lunch and dinner (everywhere uses fresh bread and really good cheese) and it was heavenly. We figured we saved money, ate extremely well and we would just eat food with nutritional value when we returned back home!
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