Grasse, France

I have been using perfume since longer than I can remember. I love to smell nice, but not overpowering and perfume gives that little extra that makes a girl feel like a lady. Being in the South of France, we had an opportunity to visit Grasse, the world’s perfume capital.

This town has been known part of perfume industry since thousands of years ago and many ‘noses’ were trained here to be perfumers. There are three popular parfumeries in this French region and these are Galimard, Fragonard and Molinard.

Our day started at Galimard, where we booked a perfume making workshop. We took the train from Nice, then walked around to get to the Tourist Info center, where we took the bus ride to Galimard. We got lost getting to the museum, then we were told that the workshop is actually at another building, about 2 kilometer walk. It wasn’t too bad but then again Grasse is very hilly, and walking under the summer sun made it harder.

By the time we got to the correct site, we each had our own cubicles facing maybe over a hundred bottles of different scents and were instructed to pick our favorites first with the base notes, then middle notes, then top notes, combining 3-5 scents first before adding another mixture of notes. It reminded me of wine blending I did back in California, only this time we are not drinking it, haha. By the time we were done we were presented with a diploma and our 100 ml of perfume. They said that they have recorded our mixture in their archives and we can order more later on.