St. Tropez with Sarah!

I was graced this past weekend with the presence of the lovely, Sarah. She is a friend that I know from Iowa State who is studying in Germany this semester. She picked a great weekend to visit the French Riviera.

On Friday after she arrived, we visited a statue in Antibes that many who frequent Des Moines will recognize.         

(Side note: I did some digging and apparently this statue, as well as its Des Moines counterpart are just two in a series of similar sculptures by Jaume Plensa. Apparently, they also exist in Yorkshire, Tokyo, Vancouver, London, to name a few.)                                         

Anyway, we left early on Saturday morning to go to St. Tropez with my study abroad group. St. Tropez was made famous by Brigitte Bardot in the 1960's, as well as a popular French t.v. show about police officers who worked at La Gendarmerie (The Police Station). Today, the city is a destination for wealthy tourists.

Luckily, we visited the city before heavy tourist traffic starts in May. 

St. Tropez was a lot of fun to explore. There was a great outdoor market where they sold everything from antique books to assorted candies.

After the market, we ate a kind of cake that originated from the island of St. Tropez. It was so popular in the area that the vanilla custard filled dessert gained the name "The Tropezian." I do not have a picture of the cake however, Sarah and I ate ours fairly quickly :)

We were able to affectively burn off our cake by walking uphill to the Citadel of St. Tropez. It offered a spectacular view of the city and coastline. 

Also atop the hill was a wild peacock. I've never before seen one outside of a zoo.

I greatly enjoyed Sarah's visit. She has been gracious enough to let me visit her in Germany the first weekend of May. 

For Sarah's blog post please go to: http://sathies.wordpress.com/

Perfume Making

Grasse is a beautiful little hilltop city made famous by its long-standing reputation for exquisite perfume production. Normally, perfume creation is reserved for a very specific occupation aptly named, The Nose. We got the opportunity to create our own scent at a workshop out of Galimard Perfume Factory.

The process was actually quite interesting. We started the process by picking our two favorite scents out of a set of six. Those two scents became the two families of fragrances from which we would choose our "base" and "chest" scents. For both the base and chess scents we were again given six fragrances (three from each family of the two original scents) and again told to pick two out of the six. There was a similar process for the "face" scents but we were also allowed to choose fragrances from all of the scent families.

At the end of it, we produced 100 mL of our own unique perfume. I'm quite happy with the way mine turned out, and I'm excited to wear it.

Visit from Home

A couple of weeks ago I was graced with a visit of a familiar face. The lovely, Janet Gabel made the long flight to come see me and explore the area of France that I have come to adore.
I gave her a small tour of Antibes on Thursday night before rising early on Friday to peruse the Ventimiglia market and then take the train to Tours, France.
While in Tours, we had the opportunity to visit Chateau Chenonceau. The castle went though a series of owners including queens, kings, and kings' mistresses. It was rainy the day that we went but the grounds and castle were beautiful nonetheless.

From Tours we went to Caen, which is fairly close to the D-Day beaches of Normandy. We took a guided tour of Gold, Omaha, and Utah beaches with a stop at the American cemetery. 

 < Taken at Gold beach.

We found seashells buried in the sand of Omaha beach. It's hard to believe that the peaceful landscape was ever disturbed. 

Quite possibly the most sobering part of the trip was walking around the American cemetery located just up the hill from Omaha Beach. There were rows upon rows of white crosses (and the occasional white Star of David) representing 40% of the deaths that happened on or around D-Day. The other 60% had their bodies returned to the United States. 

None of the crosses show the soldier's age. Our tour guide said that this was intended to not reserve greater sympathy for the younger soldiers. Everyone's sacrifice was the same. 

The picture represents only a small portion of the graves overlooking the beach. Walking among the crosses was heart-wrenching. For every white grave mark also represented the void left in the lives of the people that loved that soldier. 

The cemetery was beautiful, but the apparent sorrow and sacrifice was haunting. 

This is a statue fashioned to embody the spirit of American youth. I thought it was very appropriate. 

We spent our last night together in Nice. I enjoyed my weekend of sleeping in hotels (I usually stay in dorm-style hostels when I travel), eating in restaurants (I've been eating discount pasta for months), and above all, seeing a familiar face. 

Thanks again for a great trip, Mom :)