Lovely smells

The last few days had been exceptionally fun.  Being able to spend so much time with Phil, Todd and Maya was itself worth the cost of the trip.

Maya and Adam had some errands they needed to run, so Todd, Phil and myself decided to go for a bit of a drive.  Looking at the map of the region, we noticed the town of Grasse on the upper edge of this Cote d'Azur region.  Why not we thought?

The drive turned out to be far more fun/dangerous than I thought.  The roads were narrow, windy and poorly sign posted.  I had become accustomed to driving on European roads as a result of my last trip to Italy and I was now very aware of the fact that if I was to have ever become a race car driver, I would have wanted to have been a rally car driver.  I had a great time twisting and turning up the mountainous roads (at a decently fast speed), but I'm not so sure Todd and Phil had as much fun.  Still, we made it safely to the town of Grasse, found a parking spot (in what later turned out to be a terrible spot to park) and went out to start exploring.

Grasse is a bit higher up, so it is another one of the beautiful French towns sitting on a hill.  The slow slope gives a lovely view of rooftops which slowly descend into the valley below.

Once we were further inside the old town itself, we found an old town that felt like it needed a bit of care.  There were plenty of towns like this around the world that have been dressed up for the purposes of tourism, but Grasse felt like it needed a bit of work to be done still.  The buildings needed repair, paint was chipped and there was a bit of grime everywhere.  It wasn't a terrible thing to see, as it was more of a unique experience.  It felt as though this looked closer to the original than the more manufactured towns you would see closer to the coast.

We walked up the hill towards the centre of town.

As we walked up, we saw lots of free parking spots which were much closer to where we wanted to go.  We briefly went through the mental struggle of whether to turn back and get the car before we realised we had gone too far.... after all the cheese, we probably needed the exercise anyway.

We reached the top and the main part of the town.

Grasse by itself probably isn't that amazing.  There are prettier towns with nicer scenery.  What Grasse has is a history which makes it very special.  It was the centre of France's perfume industry and it still holds itself to be the world's perfume capital.  None of us are all that interested in perfume, but this seemed like something unique to look at.  We went to the Fragonard perfumery and signed up for the free tour.

I don't think I had ever read or learnt anything about perfumes prior to this visit.

It was a relatively enlightening experience, seeing how the different products were made.  These perfumes were all made with natural products, so a considerable amount of effort and resources went into the extraction process for each of the base scents.  Seeing the work put into slowly drawing the smell out of a flower or some other herbs made me realise and understand where the value was in these products in comparison to the mass produced products made from chemical compounds.

As part of the tour, they let us take part in various "tests" of our noses to see how well we could identify the different base smells which were used to create all the perfumes that were made.  There were a couple of girls on the tour with us who seemed confident in their abilities.  Our first set of tests was to try and identify the various underlying smells in different perfumes.  With prodding and a bit of help, we were able to start picking out how various fragrances were constructed.

The tour then moved on and we were taken to look at different vats and machines used in the process of fragrance creation.  We reached the end of the tour and we were  given our final test.  We were given ten different smells and we were asked to match them up with the correct name tags.  We all started the test and I was quickly shocked by how difficult it was to link a smell with a name.  It was an odd feeling.  I "knew" the smell.  I could clearly differentiate the smell from the different smells.  But when it came to the point of trying to identify "what" that smell actually was, that was a significantly more difficult task.  The first five or so we thought we had quickly, but the last few... those were tough.  We put in our selections and waited for our tour guide to give us our grades.  Phil, Todd and I all scored the same.  The girls on the other hand were much lower.  The look on their faces told the story of their shock.  These three random guys all had better noses than them!

One incredibly surprising thing for all of us was the complete lack of any allergic reaction.  All of us to an extent have suffered from hay ever or some random allergies over the years towards things like scents and fragrances (or so we thought).  We all went into the perfumery with a slight sense of concern about whether we would be reduced to red eyed, sniffling creatures trying to hold back our sneezing.  Instead.... nothing.  No reaction at all.  Todd had been struggling a touch with some hay fever since he arrived in France, and he found himself feeling better inside the perfumery than outside.  It made me wonder how much of our allergies are triggered by other less natural irritants as opposed to the natural world around us.  Everything in this perfumery was naturally made and of the highest quality, and yet we were all fine.  On the other hand, maybe we just had incredibly refined noses which reacted positively to the quality of the products....