Florence/Nice Tour with Recreating Eden
September 16th – 26th, 2007

 

September 21 Friday, Day 6
It’s up early as we want to board the coach so that we arrive into Nice by 4 p.m. Welcome to the 4 Star Le Meridien Nice. At the most prestigious address in town, on the famous Promenade des Anglais, Le Meridien Nice is located at the heart of the city, facing the Mediterranean Sea and a stone's throw from the Old Town. We met later on this evening for our dinner together and also met the crew who are here to film Tom and I for the television series ‘Recreating Eden’.

September 22 Saturday, Day 7
After breakfast we board our coach and with our guide, Stephanie, head out for a visit to Grasse. Rising from the hills above the Mediterranean is the city of Grasse, the perfume capital of the world, surrounded by the charming Provencal landscape and villages of the Pays de Grasse, the regional name for this breathtaking and tranquil countryside. Together, they form the French Rivera’s most beautiful balcony. Flowers have given Grasse, its aristocratic title. There once was a time when the city was graced with the breathtaking sight and heady perfume of gardens and flower fields filled with jasmine, rose and tuberose, the three queens of the flower kingdom so essential to the perfume industry. Today, some twenty farmers cultivate such flower fields, and certain gardens are conceived so as to preserve this heritage by composing a rich bouquet of the fragrances of Provence. There is a small market open today which we all enjoy.

We also visited the Jean-Honoré Fragonard Parfumerie This historic perfume factory in the heart of the Old Town is one of the oldest in Grasse, for they have been perfume making from here since 1782. In 1926 they took the name of Parfumerie Fragonard as a tribute to the famous painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Here on a daily basis they produce their perfumes, cosmetics and soaps in a setting imbued with respect for tradition. It remains a family run business and it sees itself as steeped in the traditions of the past, while embracing the future. We were welcomed and taken on a guided tour, during which we discovered the various procedures involved in creating and producing their products. At the end of this tour you can admire 3000 years of perfume history in their private museum.

We then visited the Huilerie Sainte-Anne for a wonderful time of tasting and sampling not only the oil, but the olives. This is a traditional olive mill and is three centuries old. Tom went crazy in the gift shop, where there was even Absente for sale. We picked up some delicious olive oil paste and some other goodies.