Grasse

I went to Grasse two weeks ago now...oops! We took the bus up to the perfume capitol of the world and made our own perfume! We were supposed to follow this recipe which had the exact amount of lavender, orange, ceder, grapefruit and several other flavors. Since I had heard from a little birdie (aka the people who had gone on that Tuesday to do the same thing) I was told to just do what you felt smelled good. It didn't turn out too badly...smells similar to something you would spray on linens, or in a room to make it smell better. Not too shabby! We then made our way through the Perfumerie Museum...


It took us through Egypt and Rome and France, including some things from Marie Antoinette for perfume making. It was ...interesting...but the best part was going to the actual Parfumerie where you can see how the perfume is made...


The name ofthe Parfumerie is Fragonard, apparently quite famous...
This is a way of pulling the scent from flowers....very tedious and they hardly do this anymore, but they wanted to show us. It is actually a fascinating process, mainly becauseI knew nothing about how you actually make perfume. It was pretty cool!
There are 1000 people in the world who are "noses" for parfum. You have to go through about 10 years of schooling just to become a parfumer. It's very intense, and they have these "labs" set up so they can mix and play with new scents. Very hard job! The place smelled like tons of perfume all the time and I'm surprised I didn't get a headache!

We then were, surprisingly, placed into their shop where they sell the parfum and eau de toilette (literal translation being toilet water....). I did buy some and got a pretty sweet deal on it...I'm picky with perfume, so this was a hard decision!! It was fun and interesting and I'm glad I decided to go despite being exhausted all day!