The Cote d'Azur

In which I visit Grasse and wonder if Coco Chanel was right: Do women who don't wear perfume really have no future? And then I soak up the blue of Henri Matisse, Yves Klein and the Mediterranean sea.

{Provence, France}

Have I mentioned that it is the second hottest summer on record in the south of France? I’m pretty sure I have…it’s hard to think about anything else, to be honest. The heat has me googling: did you know that only 5% of French homes have air conditioning? It is this way across all of Europe - 10% is the average, continent-wide. It is just the opposite in the United States, where about 10% of homes don’t have air conditioning. Whether or not this is a good thing is certainly debatable - it is, obviously, far better for the environment to skip the air conditioning. But still, it is a little cultural difference that takes some getting used to.

Cars, thankfully, do have air-conditioning. And as the mercury creeps near 100 degrees in Arles, it seems like the perfect time for a road trip.

If there’s one thing that I know for sure, from the tips of my toes to the depths of my soul, it’s that I’m not French Riviera material.

Being a child of the 80s, the words “French Riviera” conjure up memories of endless late-night reruns of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and Bain de Soleil commercials featuring impossibly tan (and thin) models in tiny bikinis and huge sunglasses. And I’m not going to lie, any place that Robin Leach visited is not likely to be somewhere where I’d like to hang my hat. And yet, there’s one city that I’ve wanted to see for ages and ages: Grasse, a town just inland from the French Riviera that has been the center of the perfume industry in France since the 17th century.

And so - with a ridiculously cheap last-minute hotel deal, a tiny little rented Renault and an absolute certainty that I will be the single least glamorous person on the Cote d’Azur - I hit the road, humming the opening bars of Charles Trenet’s “La Mer” as I set off along the coast.