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Day 4 - Smelling Beautiful in Grasse
It was Hana's last day with us before her work conference so she planned a wonderful day for us before we dropped her off to her new hotel. First up was perfume making in Grasse. The road to get there was again a bit scary -not on the highway but on a lot of back windy roads. We decided to ignore the GPS and follow the signs to the perfumery called Galimard and it turns out the perfume workshops were not held there but somewhere else. We jumped back in the car and managed to make it to the right Galimard in time (no thanks to the shop assistant in the first Galimard), even after dealing with the craziest and busiest car park we have ever experienced. We were all very excited for our perfume workshop and we learnt a bit about the perfume making process - there are three layers to a perfume the base notes, the heart and the peak. the process we went through included:
1. Selecting and mixing the base notes - for the base notes we selected 4 scents we liked (including vanilla). The base notes are the part of the perfume that lasts the longest on the skin. The teacher decided what quantities of each scent we needed and then we poured the bottles into the measuring cylinder. When done you pour the liquid from the measuring cylinder into a beaker and back into the measuring cylinder which mixes it up. You then take a paper swab to smell the perfume.
2. Selecting and mixing the heart notes with the base- we got to select 6 flavours to make the heart of the perfume these build on the base. To pick the flavours you like you need to smell the the bottle of fragrance with the paper swab of your base note. We followed the same process of adding these fragrances to the measuring cylinder and mixing in the beaker.
3. Selecting and mixing the peak notes with the base and heart notes - we chose 5 more fragrances for the peak which is the layer of perfume that gives he perfume freshness and only can be smelt when you first spray the perfume. The same process is followed again with pouring the fragrance into the measuring cylinder and then the beaker.
And then we were done. We had to choose a name for our perfume - I chose Maleficent as well as a nice bottle and they print the name of your perfume on a label for you. It was a very fun experience but I'm not sure our scents smell the best (Hana's was definitely better than mine and Jayne's). So some lucky person (probably you mother d) will get my perfume as a present.
After the perfume making activity we drove to St Paul de Vence which is the town where Hana was spending the night. We had lunch in the fancy restaurant of the hotel she was staying at - la Colombe d'or. The lunch was amazing but again very heavy and filling. I had a creamy chicken with rice dish, potato bake and salad and it was the best food I have had since being in France. Hana tells us that the town is known for its artists and it was evident walking through the town with the number of shops selling paintings and sculptures. My favourite was a massive sparkly panda that was in the window of one of the shops. Also the hotel Hana was staying at had a lot of paintings from famous artists such as Picasso on the walls, as these artists stayed there and didn't have any money so they donated art work to pay for their stay.
We said goodbye to Hana and headed home for a quiet night and on the way home managed to go around a roundabout a couple of times as we weren't sure what way to go and whether we were on the correct side of the road!
Later
Amanda
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