11.1.11: Ça Fleure Bon Looks Forward To A Fragrant Year With An 11-Piece Prize Draw...

By way of a scented "sorbet course" to clear the palate between helpings of the ongoing Californian road trip report (just one more category to go before the perfume...er....travelogue!), you might like to check out today's post on Ça Fleure Bon here. The spooky date of 11.1.11 (or 1.11.11 if you prefer) prompted nine of us to address the question of fragrant developments we are looking forward to in 2011 - or would welcome, say. For some are definitely in the pipeline, some are a possibility, while others are more like wishful thinking... And there are a fair few personal aspirations chucked in there for good measure, along with the odd leftover item from people's Christmas lists. Well, mine, certainly.

Not forgetting an 11-piece prize draw, featuring a selection of niche scents and soap courtesy of Xerjoff, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz, Anya's Garden, Geza Schoen and Atelier Cologne. I've got my eye on the Atelier soap in particular, but am doubtless not eligible to enter!


Photo from The Perfume Diaries exhibition my own

California Dreaming: Another Bonkers Road Trip - The Travel Bit: Part 2

I fully intend to write a separate post about the perfume-related aspects of my recent US trip - no, really, I do - but meanwhile there are still a couple of categories to go in the "travelogue"...

The roads

In Part 1 I described the idiosyncrasies of my hire car, notably the random and arcane positioning of essential controls. Readers may be surprised to learn that I found the roads themselves in California endlessly fascinating. First there is the road surface. I speak as something of a connoisseur of road surfaces throughout Europe and North America, and earlier this year I was moved to write about the unexpectedly poor state of Swiss roads here.

The correct term for the surface of many (though by no means all) American roads is - I believe - asphalt. It is a light coloured material that makes a pleasantly thunderous noise beneath your tyres. But my attention was frequently distracted by an extraordinary variety of road surface deformities. Just as the Eskimos are reputed to have some 20 words for snow, the Californians could do with...oh...at least 5-10 to characterise the diversity of their asphalt imperfections.

I encountered a few potholes - but not so many as to constitute a worrying phenomenon. Perhaps the main type of surface deformation were the long sections of longitudinal striations (says she, frantically rummaging for terminology from O-Level geography lessons on glacial landforms). The striations exactly resembled the surface of a vinyl record, and even whined faintly under my tyres. On road sections that had been prepared for repaving, a rougher and more troublesome version of this "ribbing" lay in wait, and I juddered nervously for miles up the I-5 towards Bakersfield, imagining lacerations to my tyres comparable to the terminal damage inflicted by those spikes at rental car lots, should you be foolish enough to disobey the sign telling you not to back up...

A further variation on the striations involved chunkier, interlocking grooves in a sort of herring bone formation like a zip. And here and there I encountered those shallow trenches running parallel with the hard shoulder into which your tyre can lurch unexpectedly if you drift too close to the verge. The Poles (another nation with an impressive range of misshapen roads) have a specific word for these: "koleiny".

Elsewhere I saw what looked like straggly cracks in the road, resembling earthquake damage or a parched delta. While some of these cracks were unfilled, others had been tarmac-ed over rather generously, giving rise to a feature known as "tar snakes".

Perhaps the most aesthetic-looking imperfection of all were the stretches of highway with swirly patterns of what looked like congealed snail trails. It was as if a snail had supped at a beer glass all night and proceeded to spin in mad balletic pirouettes all over the carriageway, leaving an avant-garde artwork of glistening squiggles behind. Or if a human hand with violent DTs had twizzled Superglue from a honey drizzler, perhaps. Now with hindsight these may have been a translucent species of tar snake for all I know, but I cannot be sure.

As well as being alert to the condition of the road, I also kept an eye out for obstructions. Germany is the most dangerous country I have visited in this regard, as detailed here. By comparison, California is relatively tame in terms of carriageway detritus: the odd spinning wheel rim, intermittent slaloms of HGV tyre shreddings, though Florida takes the biscuit for that. (Or it did in 2001.)

Roadside hoardings can also be quite distracting in the US - in urban areas the main roads are positively bristling with them. On a previous trip I nearly swerved into the verge when I glimpsed a billboard advertising a vasectomy clinic with the punchy slogan: DIAL-1-800-SNIP. This time around I was forever spotting hoardings in similar vein: DIAL-1-800-GET-THIN, accompanied by a photograph of a man or woman standing on scales or measuring their waistlines with a tape measure, looking rather smug. This was an ad for something called a LAP-BAND, over which I puzzled for at least a week.

Were people paying good money for some kind of a belt that restrained your stomach, like an airline seat belt, perhaps? But we all own belts already, and could easily just tighten them a notch or two to achieve a similar effect. Or is it significant that the lap-band encircles your abdomen, while a belt designed to hold up your trousers is generally positioned lower, on the hips? I mused over all possible design options of the lap-band for hundreds of miles until I chanced on a TV news feature about lap-band surgery and realised that this was in fact the latest term for "gastric band surgery". And what struck me about the ad campaign was that it seemed to be marketing this rather drastic procedure to the public at large - anyone with a bit of a weight problem, basically - rather than those who are morbidly obese.

Finally, no catalogue of road surfaces would be complete without a description of my intrepid trip up a mountain (taller than Ben Nevis!) in the Mojave Desert. I had an appointment with an executive at a wind farm operating company, and his prefabricated office was conveniently located on the summit. When we arranged the meeting, he strongly recommended that I rent a 4 x 4, warning me of the dangers that could befall the hapless motorist if it had recently rained. The 5 mile dirt track to his office would have been transformed in a matter of hours into a river of mud, and a regular compact car risked becoming mired in the sludge, wheels spinning uselessly, if they spun at all.

I mulled over my respondent's advice long and hard, but in the end my phobia of large clumpy vehicles far outweighed my fear of mudslides, and I rented the sub-compact Chevy mentioned in my previous post. I decided that if it did rain the night before my meeting, there was nothing for it but to get up in the small hours, borrow a Miner's headlamp and a pair of Wellingtons - from where I hadn't quite figured out - and attempt the climb on foot.

As luck would have it, the day dawned bright and sunny - and windy. The 5000 turbines on this, the second largest collection of wind generators in the world, were earning their keep that day, like demented, oversized daisies. I made steady progress up the mountainside in second gear - or what I imagined would have been second gear if I wasn't driving an automatic. 40 minutes later I reached the summit, and when I got out of the car the wind nearly blew the door off. As for my hair...well, suffice to say that a single 80mph gust instantly transformed my slightly blowsy style into the most convincing faux-Puckrik ever! On balance, a blob of gloop probably remains a more practical everyday option...



Coming up in Part 3...the food! And after that? Perfume....


Photo of Kern County from aaroads.com, photo of records from tic-howstuffworks.com, photo of tar snakes from picasaweb.google.com, photo of lap-band hoarding from tollfreenumbers.com, photo of snail from photos-animals.com, photos of wind turbines my own.

California Dreaming: Another Bonkers Road Trip - The Travel Bit: Part 1

Back in December, having emerged from the rabbit hole in which I had been grappling with the alternate reality of a large and wildly inaccurate database, I did eventually go to the USA on my work project. This post got repeatedly bumped by a procession of Wise Men and Foolish Bathers, but here it is now. Or the first instalment of the "travelogue" bit at least. My various scented escapades, including another meeting with Katie Puckrik(!), will follow in due course.

So, America... May I state quite clearly at the outset that I LOVE AMERICA. Have done since I first set foot in Cleveland in May 1984, even though it was a chilly 50F and I had brought all the wrong clothes. In the intervening years I have visited 30 states and would love to visit the rest some day. Okay, so I might skip one or two, like Iowa or one of the Dakotas, but my wanderlust is far from sated.

The planes

I flew from Birmingham on 6th December, and America began at the end of the jetway...You know immediately that you are on a US air carrier when the flight attendants are middle aged "and higher" (to borrow a row calling term of theirs), with attractive, lived-in faces normally considered to look better on men. But these cabin crew of a certain age wore them just fine.

The other way you know you are already in America is the terminology. The plane will be leaving "momentarily", and all hand luggage must be carefully "stowed" "at this time", in the hope that "items" will not "shift" during the flight. Drinks are always "beverages", and the plastic cups the drinks come in are known as "service items". Those derisorily small complimentary bags of Pretzels that come with the drinks would also be an example of service items, if they were still served. Sadly, mini-pretzels or indeed any other 3-mouthful snack item were conspicuous by their absence on the six hour flight from Newark down to LA, and I was forced to break into my emergency bar of Lidl chocolate somewhere over Kansas.

Another thing that concerned me on the flight was the sheer number of adverts for cosmetic dental clinics in the in-flight magazine. It may only be a matter of time before your teeth are submitted for inspection to Homeland Security as you enter the country, right after they have fingerprinted you and taken a photo of your iris. You will additionally have to declare anything less than a Hollywood smile on those landing card thingys, along with your secret stash of snails, assorted vegetable matter, and moral turpitude.

Speaking of security, the search procedures are as rigorous as the last time I flew to the States: there was the usual mass rummage at the X-Ray machine to extricate laptops from cases, and the semi-striptease of coat, jacket, scarf, hat, belt and shoe removal. I did hear a great story of someone who snapped recently at an airport, shaking an imperious finger at ground staff and shouting: "If you touch my junk, I'm going to have you arrested!"

The hire car

Once at your destination, there are a number of challenges when renting a hire car in the US: the first two are 1) adequately conveying the concept of "small" to the Avis representative, and 2) avoiding being upsold all sorts of features, ranging from snow chains to personal accident insurance to...a much bigger car.

These hurdles successfully negotiated - I set off from LA airport in a relatively minuscule Chevy Aveo - I reached my hotel an hour later, whereupon it took me a further hour and and a half and the combined wisdom of five passing strangers to figure out how to open the boot. (The answer? A catch cunningly located to the far right of the tailgate, not bang in the centre by the actual lock, as any reasonable person might assume.) But in the course of my fingertip search of the car's interior looking for concealed mechanisms, I did at least manage to find the fuel cap release lever, the bonnet catch, the seat adjustment rail, 10 cents and a discarded map of the greater LA area.

The hotels

It would be a fair summary to say that "on this trip I have mostly been staying in Best Westerns." Best Westerns, a couple of Holiday Inn Expresses, a Ramada, a Quality Inn, a Comfort Inn and a Dynasty Suites. The exception being the Art Deco Cadillac Hotel where I spent the first weekend in LA, and which I booked myself. But don't get me wrong - I have nothing against chain hotels. Like Starbuck's, they are reassuringly familiar: when you walk into the room, it will always be in darkness, even in the middle of the afternoon, the closed curtains fluttering slightly in the vicious updraught of the air con. This appliance must be disabled within minutes of arrival to ensure a comfortable stay.

Then the en suite will invariably have a sunken boxy bathtub, with a clunky mixer tap that swivels 340 degrees in an anti-clockwise direction, never seeming to pass through an angle that loosely corresponds to "hot". That'll be down to the whole safety-conscious mentality, I'll bet. For the fear in hoteliers' minds of being sued by scalded guests greatly outweighs that of lost custom from their shivering unwashed ones. The litigious climate in America also explains why it is so difficult to find "hot tea" in the USA. Okay, there is partly a cultural element to this, because iced tea is the default variant over there, but even if you are careful to specify "hot tea", the catering staff often err on the side of tepid. Having registered this fundamental flaw with your beverage, you stop caring about the fact that the waitress overlooked your request for a "little bit of cold milk on the side, please."

Another distinctive feature of American hotel rooms are the beds. The size of the beds, like the cars, is more than generous - four pillows in a row is not uncommon - and the norm seems to be to put two giant beds in each room. I have long puzzled over the nature of the relationship between the 4 - or possibly 6 - occupants of this ample accommodation. A family with small children, perhaps? Migrant workers, keen to reduce their per head lodging costs? Swinging couples, even? But based on the average occupancy of cars on the road, most travellers are either alone or comprise a single couple at best. Or... perhaps the provision of two beds is to enable hormonal 50-something women like me to hop across to Bed No 2 in the middle of the night when Bed No 1 gets overheated - or intolerably rumpled by my involuntary limb-thrashing. Yes, that'll be it, then. How thoughtful!

Now you could be forgiven for thinking that the Best Western chain, typically costing between $80 and $120 a night, would attract a certain calibre of clientele: sales reps, retired couples on road trips and the odd maverick market researcher. Imagine my surprise over breakfast on that first morning, when I overheard fragments of a conversation that sounded more like something out of the TV show Deadwood, an altogether different type of "Western"...

A young Hispanic man in his late 20s was discussing a number of potential "lodgers" whom the two middle-aged women sitting at the table opposite him were considering housing - all expenses paid by the sound of things. The estimated accommodation costs for one of the girls ran to some $5000 a month - she expected a whole house to herself, apparently, not just a bedsit, which I initially found puzzling. The penny finally dropped when the man referred to this girl as "Ball Buster". I could see even on Day One that this was going to be an interesting trip...



...to be continued


Photo of plane from Wikimedia Commons, photo of in-flight snack from mealsonplanes.com, photo of a Chevy Aveo from latestpriceindia.com, photos of my hotel in Fresno from Tripadvisor, photo of a Deadwood prostitute from calpernia.com

The Dutch Go Bonkers!

I am back from Holland (I use the term broadly - The Netherlands always seems a bit of a mouthful to my mind), and am pleased to report that I found Mr Bonkers much improved on my return - particularly on the health front. I should perhaps abandon him more often when he is feeling under the weather, as it may accelerate the recovery process. Though my money's on the curative effects of the two bottles of Ribena he consumed in my absence.

The Californian Road Trip post remains imminent, but meanwhile I feel moved to comment on a couple of Dutch cultural oddities which struck me while I was over there.

Firstly, the Dutch appear to be a nation of pyromaniacs. The setting off of fireworks in Holland is confined to New Year, so this compressed time frame seems to create a tinderbox mentality - or might I mean a hothouse mentality? Either way, to say the Dutch go overboard when it comes to seeing in the New Year with fireworks is putting it mildly: an estimated 65 million euros' worth of the things go up in smoke over the festive period - including several hundred thousands of euros' worth in my friends' street, at a conservative guess - some of them directly over my head. Yes, this is the first time I have ever felt as though I was literally inside a firework display, and I could liken the effect to a cross between the opening credits of Star Trek and 3D TV. And on New Year's Day, there's the inevitable thick carpet of confetti and spent cases to scuffle through - like autumn leaves, but with a telltale note of sulphur.

As one travel site puts it: "(The Dutch) stay at home and celebrate quietly with the family until midnight, then dash out on the streets and indulge in a freestyle orgy of pyrotechnics."

I should also point out that there are two types of firework: the traditional rocket and Roman candle variety, which burst into showers of colourful sparks, and the other kind, so-called "duizend klappers" - which are the mother of all bangers, basically - acoustically akin to heavy artillery, rocket launchers, machine gun fire and the occasional 200 lb car bomb. The loud and startling reports from these incendiary devices reverberated round the neighbourhood from early morning till the small hours. Several of our party remarked that it felt like being in a war zone - images of Flanders Field, Beirut and Baghdad flashed before our eyes as we hunkered down in our friends' living room, reaching for the lids of tins of Quality Street and shortbread by way of improvised body armour. I probably left the country just hours before the shock and awe mutated into full blown Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

And then the second cultural oddity of the weekend was the annual New Year's Dive or "Duik" at Scheveningen, a suburb of The Hague. On New Year's Day, somewhat the worse for wear after the drink, merriment and fire-raising excesses of the night before, around 10,000 Dutch people of all ages - and clad in outfits of varying degrees of scantiness and/or whimsy - rush into the sea on the dot of 12.00pm, briefly get wet and rush out again, before changing en masse (and with barely a shred of inhibition amongst them) in a communal tent erected for this purpose on the sand.

Although I just happened to have bought a swimsuit the day before, I was not so foolhardy as to go in myself, though about half the 15-strong contingent from my friend's village braved the waters, including my fellow countrywoman and owner of Meg, the pipped pageant pooch), though she may have been ever so slightly cheating by wearing a wetsuit... Everybody - "divers" and spectators alike - received a carrier bag from the sausage company sponsoring the event, containing a dayglo orange bobble hat, dayglo orange gloves, a tin of pea soup bearing the legent "dive hero", and a commemorative bookmark/medal, rather optimistically stating that the water was "scrummy", if my rudimentary grasp of Dutch serves me.

And there was one more surprise to come that weekend...In Spakenburg, a sleepy and picturesque fishing port to which we made an excursion on the last day, my friend pointed out a perfumery shop in an alleyway called La Ruelle. The staff were visible inside merchandising the shelves, but the sign on the door clearly stated that the store was "gesloten", so I contented myself with peering through the window.

Imagine my surprise when, nestling amongst the Amouages, Serge Lutenses and Etros - remarkable enough but not completely unprecedented in a small village on the continent - I spied a full shelf of Parfumerie Generales. At 30% off no less! I only know of one retail outlet in the UK for PG (Les Senteurs) and 1-2 at most in Paris. So how come a little shop in Spakenburg in Holland had managed to acquire the line? Does Pierre Guillaume have business connections with Holland? Maybe there is some kind of reciprocal trade agreement in place: perfume for gerookte paling perhaps (smoked eel, a Spakenburg speciality)? Or aged Gouda, cheese graters, Delft tableware, or maybe even the dreaded "duizendklappers"....though for the sake of those poor citizens of Clermont-Ferrand, I do hope not.



And finally, a big thank you is due to our hosts in Hoevelaken for their unstinting hospitality, bottomless wine cellar and banger-free bolthole.


Photos of fireworks from Wikimedia Commons and panoramio.com, photos of New Year's Dive from Wikimedia Commons and Clare Chick, photo of Spakenburg from toeristeninformatie.nl, photo of La Ruelle from the shop's website.

Bonkers Goes Dutch!

Am off today to Holland to visit friends over the New Year - with luck I will return to something approaching a normal posting schedule next week (work permitting...).

Meanwhile, the forlorn lump of snot and misery that is Mr Bonkers (and I mean that most kindly!) is protesting at this latest abandonment. He is not sure that he will be up to solo Ribena-buying missions. In his darkest moments last night he muttered that he might expire completely in the first fifteen minutes following my departure, and that I would doubtless return on Monday night to find him half eaten by Charlie Bonkers. I am hoping that the cat would have the wit to pop round the neighbours if she was getting peckish, but you never know in an apocalyptic scenario of this nature.

So if you don't see any posts from me next week, you'll know that I am busy sourcing a guitar-shaped wheelie bin (despite Mr B's injunctions not to take any trouble over his funeral arrangements), and organising fellow musicians to play Django Bates' version of "New York, New York" at Mr B's wake. Though obviously I hope to find him sitting comfortably in front of the TV watching Sky Sports, tube of Pringles by his side, cat snoozing peacefully on his lap...

Photo from nonprints.com

New Post on Ça Fleure Bon - Gift Ghosts Of Christmas Past

Thanks to a curious unseen algorhythm, my first two posts for Ça Fleure Bon have been published the day after a public holiday involving the consumption of copious amounts of turkey - "holiday feasts", no less.

This remarkable pattern may be broken in January, for by my reckoning my next post should fall after Martin Luther King's Birthday (not that that holiday is especially associated with poultry, to my knowledge), and if it happens to coincide with the day after Burns' Night, at least the protein element will be different, and the presentation (in a sheep's stomach) radically so.

So here is a link to the latest one: Boxing Day "Bah Humbug!" And A Glut Of Gift Giving Gaffes

Christmas in this household was decidedly low key this year. Mr Bonkers has unfortunately been struck down with an unpleasant combination of flu and a stomach bug. He struggled up at 9am, laid the table, and went back to bed until Mrs Bonkers Senior arrived in the afternoon. Our usual Christmas tipple of champagne was put on ice, and Mr B opted instead for pints of Ribena, which at least matched the place mats. This may have been the first Christmas ever when he has not been well enough to devour a whole Terry's Chocolate Orange in one sitting, though he did manage a second helping of his mother's trifle - because the jelly "slipped down nicely". Then he manfully lounged around on the sofa till just after The Royle Family, and I say that without a trace of irony - it took all his reserves to manage even short stints of festive slumpery.

On the present front, I did pretty well on the whole. Mr Bonkers gave me an I.O.U., Sibling Claus gave me a big bottle of Diptyque Eau Duelle, Mrs Bonkers Senior gave me a pretty silver bracelet and half a radiator to take the chill off Charlie Bonkers's quarters. Indeed the only gifting gaffe which I could have included in my Ça Fleure Bon post is the present a good friend gave me, which comprised four different foodstuffs. The only one of the four I liked was the packet of chicken soup.

We Three Kings: Gold, Frankincense & Myrrh - Myrrh

Three Kings Icon ©2010 Megan Ruisch

MYRRH: Eau d’Italie – Baume du Doge (“boho pomade”)

Notes: sweet orange, bergamot, wild fennel, myrrh, frankincense, saffron, cloves, cinnamon, coriander, black pepper, benzoin, cedar, vetiver, cardamom, vanilla


Baume du Doge, created by Bertrand Duchaufour, takes its inspiration from Venice: firstly from the lofty personage of the Doge himself, the Republic's highest ranking official, and secondly from the spice trade, for which the area was an important hub. The position of Doge, an ecclesiastical, civil and military leader in a somewhat gynaecological-sounding power structure known as “caesoropapism”, was created as early as 700 AD, and persisted for some 1000 years.

I use the term “persisted” advisedly, for holding down the office of Doge was no cushy number, and the roll call of incumbents sounds a lot like the screenplay of a medieval Pulp Fiction. Yes, a cursory glance at Wikipedia reveals that some of the 120 doges over that millennium, who clocked up an average of 8.33 years apiece, actually had a bit of a torrid time to say the least. Already in the 8th century, a worrying pattern seems to be emerging:

- Teodato Ipato (742–755) deposed, blinded, and exiled
- Galla Gaulo (755–756) deposed, blinded, and exiled
- Domenico Monegario (756–764) deposed, blinded, and exiled

And see what happens when one of their number tried to break this cycle of sightless sacking and banishment…?

- Obelereo Antenoreo (804–811) exiled, attempted to return to power, killed & head displayed in the market

And then the pattern broke itself, though in a way that would have brought small comfort to the Doge in question.

- Pietro Gradonico (837–864) assassination, although in this case his successor arrested and executed the assassins

Given dogeal survival rates down the ages, losing some facial hair was pretty much as good a result as could be hoped for.

- Otto Orseolo (1009–1026) arrested, beard shaved, and banished to Constantinople for nepotism.

Okay, so so much for the Doges themselves – on to the “baume”….The word means “balm”, which in turn suggests to me some kind of solid perfume or pomade with which the Doge would have topped off his resplendent ceremonial attire. And meanwhile myrrh, which features in this scent, was traditionally used as an “embalming oil”, and there are suggestions that the Wise Man who gave it to the infant Jesus was alluding obliquely to the crucifixion the latter would go on to suffer. If so, that makes myrrh rather a dark choice on his part, but there it is.

In selecting Baume du Doge and Icon, I seem to be drawn to an orangey-myrrh kind of a vibe, as both scents feature those notes. (Baume du Doge additionally has frankincense, so it could also have traded places with Eau Duelle.) However, Baume du Doge is very different in style from Icon: it is heavy, where Icon is bright and slightly astringent; it is also sweet and woody and spicy and jolly incensey. I am almost inclined to call it “gourmand incense”, if such a fragrance category exists. The first main olfactory element I can discern here is a bone dry woodiness that is the Duchaufour's hallmark (most memorably in Timbuktu), with connotations of tea chests and old furniture – it is an overtly “planky” style of woodiness. We are talking sharp shards of wood you could snag your pullover on if you are not careful.

This woody base is overlaid with the sweet, spicy creamy accord of the “baume”. The orange disappears quite quickly in the scent’s development, and the clovey, cinnamony spices take over. I picture a pot of pomade on dark wood dressing table in a room that barely sees the light of day. A dressing table stored in an attic would be even better, but I can’t see our Doge being quite spry enough to shimmy up the retractable step ladder to fetch down his musty unguent.

The overall effect of this scent is soothing and ecclesiastical. The same feel as Etro’s Messe de Minuit, but creamier and spicier – warmer and with less of the dank flagstoney thing going on.

Now one of the ceremonial duties of the Doge was to celebrate the symbolic marriage of the city of Venice with the sea by throwing a ring from the State barge into the Adriatic. And it just so happens that I wrote this post in Venice, California, right on the beach, lushly fringed by palm trees and encampments of tramps and hippies.

Hippies…ah yes… that is the other element of which Baume du Doge vaguely reminds me. Head shops selling joss sticks abound in Venice Beach, and everyone here is pretty chilled, so possibly they are high on nag champa and baumed up on the nearest contemporary equivalent to our Doge’s pomade...which in modern hairdressing parlance would of course be called "product", but that is a whole other post...

The other participating blogs are listed below - we have all chosen different scents, so every post will be a different interpretation of this theme!

Redolent of Spices

Scent of the Day

EauMG

Parfumieren

All I Am - A Redhead

Chicken Freak's Obsession

Notes from Josephine

The Perfume Chronicles

My Perfume Life


Photo of Baume du Doge from Fragrantica, photo of a Doge from Wikimedia Commons, photo of the Doge's Palace from egypttoursonline.com and photo of an incense stall on Venice Beach my own.