A variation on a poll we did in 2012 and again in 2014.
Tell us about the best summer vacation you ever took (or the worst, or the funniest, or the most interesting), and tell us about the perfume that matches that vacation — even if you weren't wearing it at the time.
And don't forget that next Friday will be Fantasy Vacation Friday: pick a destination and wear the scent that takes you there!
Note: image is Yosemite Falls and the Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California via Boston Public Library at flickr; some rights reserved.
I’m not a summer-vacation person: I’d rather travel in the spring and fall, so I don’t really have a best summer trip. My worst was a two-week visit to my mom before she had air conditioning: it was in the middle of a heat wave and one day it was so hot I actually passed out. I guess the perfume to match that would be something suffocatingly warm and cloying, so maybe Gaultier 2?
Ugh.
I just came back from a three-week vacation in the UK and brought several decants and samples, which worked well. Vetiver Pour Elle was complimented at the conference I was at, which was fun since I didn’t expected a perfumista conversation there.
How nice!
Several years ago we rented a small, quaint beach house in Fire Island (NY) from a friend for several long summer weekends. I loved that summer and I love Fire Island! The house was quaint and had a fabulous outdoor shower in the back. It was an all beach, walks through the rustic town with lots of free-roaming deer, and seafood dinners vacation. I would say Olympic Orchids Golden Cattleya is a good match. It is rustic, honeyed sunshine in a bottle. The sweet, earthy quality reminds me of the dried bamboo shoots that are everywhere.
I have never been there, sounds perfect. I always assumed it was terribly crowded, way more so than would allow dear to roam through town!
Most of FI isn’t too crowded because there are very few hotels and no cars. The deer are pretty fearless and eat discarded human food so it works in their favor. I saw a deer eating a hotdog from the trash 🙁 No good.
Interesting. We have a very large apple tree in our backyard and the deer come to eat the apples…worries me that the little ones will not run away until I am a few feet away. They need to be fearful around here.
Well, the best one recently was my honeymoon in California wine country, but I’d rather tell you about the goofiest summer vacation my family spent many years ago. I was in college and had actually moved out of my parents’ house, but my three younger brothers were still at home, and Mom and Dad really wanted one last “all of us together” vacation. So we took a road trip to Lake Tahoe. And it RAINED. For two solid days. We ate junk food and played board games and generally tried to make the best of things, but when the third day looked to be more rain and indoor “fun”, we packed it in and hit the road looking for sunshine. Somehow we ended up in Sacramento, at a motel that had a small man-made lake in the middle of the buildings that you could sail tiny little sailboats on, and a walking trail around the perimeter, and a swimming pool, and they showed movies outdoors at night. It was unique and fun, and we all had a blast. The perfume that would have matched the experience (and that wasn’t available at the time because the California-girl celebrity whose fragrance it is probably hadn’t even graduated grade school yet) is Jennifer Aniston Eau de Parfum – a bit of suntan oil, a bit of sweaty skin, and lots of night-blooming jasmine.
Hey, that sounds like great fun! And Sacramento, no less, which is not the first town that comes to mind when I think of “great fun”.
Indeed! Yeah, Sacramento is right up there (down there?) with such California hot spots as Drain and Weed. 🙂
My favorite summer vacation was visiting a friend for a week in Asheville NC. We decided we would go swimming in a different place every day, and we did, mostly in the woods in swimming holes and freezing streams, and one day we even drove to the ocean and went swimming at night. The closest fragrance I can think of to that vacation is L’Artisan’s The Pour Un Ete, but I would love to hear others’ suggestions for fragrances that evoke that fresh mountain water surrounded by green leaves… I tried L’Ombre Dans L’eau years ago but I can’t remember it well enough to know if it is a match.
Asheville is pretty.
What magnificent memory-making, to go swimming in a different place every day!
Regina: How about the DSquared’s She Wood Light Wood, Velvet Mountain Wood, and especially Silver Creek Wood?
Correct names are Golden Light Wood, Velvet Forest Wood and Crystal Creek Wood. Sorry for the mix up!
I’ll try them! “Crystal creek wood” is especially apt.
Worst summer vacation: August 1982. I was 14, my sister was 9, my little brother was 4. We drove from Virginia to Florida and back, the five of us, in a 1980 diesel 4-speed VW Rabbit. My brother played with his Star Wars and GI Joe toys all the way there (pewpewpow FOOOSH!), my sister got carsick, and the AC blinked out somewhere in North Carolina on the trip south.
In FL, we were mostly staying at time-share apartment things because you could stay there free if you listened to the sales pitch. However, there was one memorable night when the apartments were all booked, and the timeshare people put us up for the night in a nearby hotel, in a room right by the elevator that didn’t seem to have been cleaned for some time. We were making do when my mom saw a cockroach scuttle across my sleeping brother’s pillow – and did she ever raise holy heck THEN! The manager apologized six million times and moved us into a nicer room, but I’m not sure Mom slept at all that night.
Disney World was fun, but it was sweltering hot (I hate summer. did I ever mention that??) and very crowded. We ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches on that trip. And I think we were all glad to get out of the car and sleep in our own beds when we got home.
A fragrance that matches it… hmm. The current version of Giorgio Beverly Hills, maybe? Like – could have been good, but wound up nerve-wracking.
I remember well those summer vacations where you piled kids in the car and drove across 5+ states. Do people do that anymore? I certainly don’t with my son.
Some people do. One of my coworkers will drive with his wife and two kids from Texas to North Dakota and back (he is from ND, so they go there to visit family).
I love your story. SO 1982. Brings back memories. And your selected matching perfume is perfect!
Yeah, completely ’82!
Not necessarily my best vacation, but it comes with the perfect scent memory attached. A couple of years ago, we rented a small house in Southern France, in Catalan territory near Ceret (it’s a small town of 7000 inhabitants that just happens to have an art museum filled with Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Miro and Chagall). It is a region that I love and it was a propery warm Meditterranean summer. I wore SL Fleurs d’Oranger the entire week and it was perfect. I know some people would find it too trong in the heat, but I adored how it melded with the skin and mixed with sunscreen. It was like I wasn’t wearing scent, but my body itself was emitting this creamy tuberose-orange blossom smell.
That sounds like a lovely vacation. It’s certainly a lovely scent.
It was indeed lovely, one of our first proper vacations with our small daughter. And I adore Fleurs d’Oranger, it just smells gorgeous to me, no intellectualizing needed.
The Grenadines in the Caribbean was amazing. We stayed at the island of Bequia on the beach. We also took a boat ride to the island of Mustique -also beautiful beaches. What I couldn’t get over was how good the fruit tasted. We visited an orchard and picked our own guava, mango, coconut, Bequia plums, Chinese apples. I also thought I knew what a banana tasted like-until I had one off the tree!
There is no air condition at most places-the island breeze keeps things cool and you sleep under a mosquito net. While I was there I wore Eau de Cologne by Chanel.
This sounds so fun!
My husband is a classical archaeologist who spends several weeks each summer in Italy, Turkey, and, lately, Greece. I’ve been fortunate to be able to travel with him here and there (when airfare is friendly and my work schedule permits). So summer travel, to me, is walking through the Roman Forum in sweltering heat, or taking a hydrofoil to Capri. The air smells of these giant lemons and salt water.
I’d wear something like Eau de Cartier, Wit, or En Passant.
This sounds heavenly. I love ancient history – Mesopotamia in particular, but anything that happened BC will do, really. I was in Rome 7 years ago, in August, 5 months pregnant. Everybody thought I was mad to go, but I loved it. Turkey is next on the list, although I’m afraid I’m not going to see Çatalhöyük this time around.
I’m enormously jealous! Sounds wonderful.
Your perfect selections are perfect.
My best summer holidays are always at a beach called Ngahau, in the place of my heart, Northland. In December and January, the days are long, and in the hottest part, you can lie under the ancient pohutukawa and move only to walk twenty feet to cool off in the sea. Sometimes there are pods of dolphins playing crazy dolphin games in the bay, and very occasionally, orca. You can gather buckets of tuatua to cook on a barbecue later, and there’s usually fresh fish straight from the sea as well. Everybody shares the chores in the morning, then does what they want, no questions asked or comments made. At night, there’s no light pollution and the view up into the Milky Way is both magnificent and humbling. Auckland is very far away, much further than the objective 149 miles a map would say, and time goes slower here than anywhere else in the universe.
A perfume for all this? In truth, I probably usually smell of Eau de Hapuka or whatever fish I have to gut and dress, but if I had to choose just one, I suppose it would be Cristalle, because it seems to have an unambiguous purity that goes with the long untroubled days. I wish I could find one that smells of the sea and the bush though. It wouldn’t be at all a polite perfume, not floral or musky…in fact it’s easier to imagine what it wouldn’t be than what it would be.
Dune by Christian Dior or Lys by Frederic Malle
I had to look up what tuatua are, sounds delicious and I am sure I didn’t have any when I was on South Island. I will have to get to Auckland and the surrounding area one of these days. You make it sound enchanting.
Hi, Sapphire. I’m pretty sure tuatua belong to the north, but the mainland is bound to have its local specialities. Whit sit and things, I suppose. Dunno.
You can probably tell that I love Northland, but despite its beauty, I always hesitate to encourage people to visit there, because it’s so simple. What I’ve described is the sort of holiday you can have. There aren’t any proper resorts (well, there’s Kauri Cliffs, but that’s an obscenity, in my opinion, so I’ll ignore it), there’s just clean air and beautiful beaches and a different pace to live at. A lot of people tell me that it’s like stepping back 25 years to come to A-NZ, and that Northland is another 25 years behind that. Not sure at all that can agree with the time warp thing, but certainly, there more peace to be found in Northland than in most places I’ve visited. If you’re interested, by the way, the name for Northland in te reo Maori is Te Tai Tokerau.
Botheration! I do not know why this thing wrote “whit sit” when I meant “whitebait”! You’d think it would know by now what I want.
My husband adds oysters to my scanty list of South Island delicacies.
Love Northland but living in the south I spend more time in Westland. Maybe one of the commes des garçons Monocle perfumes ( number 3 if my favourite and available in NZ) as they had a smoky, woody scent like a big bonfire on a windswept beach…bit of kelp, sand, Manuka, driftwood…and your stars, of course.
Yes! Those are exactly the elements I want to capture, Kanuka. I’ll go hunting for CdG #3. Thank you!
Tell you what I’ve been day-dreaming about recently: a perfume that smells of manuka or rewarewa honey. Sweet, but also deeply earthy and slightly peaty.
Yes…I would love that! I walk my dogs on the hills each day and pass through a section of gorse, broom, Manuka, Manuka and bracken and in the early morning dew it is amazing….sweet, nutty, earthy, and wood shavings. Really gets the perfume fantasies rocking. But Manuka honey! Man, that would be totally awesome….do it!
That monocle perfume is at Plume in Dunedin so maybe Zambezi in Auckland?
I haven’t been any farther north than Auckland on North Island, unless you count Waiheke Island – but I’d love to.
Sounds like a beautiful carefree vacation.
Nice to see NZ holidays on NST! I’ve had quite a few great holidays in NZ (I’m a NZ’er) and Northland and the East Cape are particularly fabulous. Both feel really remote and unspoiled. I was pregnant in 2005 and went with friends to the East Cape and we were camping and the other couple got engaged on the trip. It was such an adventure and I have such fond memories of that holiday. I definitely wasn’t into perfume back then but I did have Coco Madamoiselle which I probably took with me. But something like Acquasala from Gabriella Chieffo would have been brilliant for that holiday – all of the sea imagery for that perfume fits perfectly.
1983: Worst vacation-Puerto Vallarta. First day on the beach we found a dead horse with its entrails hanging out. It was later dragged out into the bay by its ankles. The bay was strewn with turquoise plastic detergent bottles what seemed like every 2 feet. It was 110 every day in May. Nice hotel which considerately provided geckos to eat the mosquitos in the room. Beds had a couple small roaches but one day one ultimate representative of the species knocked on the door. It was big enough to have its head done in taxidermy and mounted on the wall. The town was dirty and dusty, I couldn’t go shopping, it was not beautiful, and there was nothing to see or do. The food was great but even though we ate in only the best restaurants, I was sick for 3 months with amoebiasis which can be very serious, infecting the liver or the spleen. I felt like my teeth would fall out from drinking Coke instead of the water. I met a couple on their honeymoon who left early just to get out of the God-forsaken place. We took a boat trip to Yelapa. Passengers were throwing up with great regularity over the sides and on the decks. Once there, I dove off and swam to shore. We were greeted by kids selling coconut cream pies with their pet iguanas in tow. We climbed up to the waterfall where we had a Coco Loco in a coconut shell drink. This little bit of Polynesian paradise was the best part of the trip. Needless to say though, Mexico is not for me. The fragrance to wear there would be the new Frida!
That’s so awful… but you made me laugh, with your description of the giant roach!!
I didn’t mind the geckos in our hotel rooms in Hawaii, probably because mosquitoes find me quite the five-star banquet. (They always have. Used to get up on summer mornings just covered in bites, while my mom and sister might have two each.) But I had to stop The CEO from killing the geckos. They creeped him out.
My best summer vacations were spending Augusts with my grandparents as a child. They had a lovely home with lovely things, there were kids in the neighborhood to play with, and my grandmother watched Johnny Carson with me every night. Sometimes we would bake chocolate chip cookies “even though it’s really too late at night for that.” 🙂 I had such a wonderful time, and I’m sure my life turned out as well as it did because of their love during those Augusts.
I Love this!
Such a sweet story.
The worst? That’s easy. The 10 days I spent in Morocco three summers ago. Something I ate the first night (yes!) didn’t agree with me (to put it mildly) and let’s just say that I needed to remain close to the bathroom for the rest of the trip. It was just terrible. I can no longer wear the scent I took on that trip – even that tiniest whiff from the bottle makes my stomach do cartwheels.
My husband had that same experience when he was there alone staying in a flea-bag hotel. He calls it his “Sheltering Sky” trip.
I feel his pain. But at least I was not alone. I can’t imagine how it would’ve turned out if I were. 🙁
Sheltering Sky trip! That made me laugh out loud.
You poor thing. What scent did that experience ruin, just out of curiosity? Hope it wasn’t a favorite.
Not something I couldn’t live without but I did enjoy it before this episode. It was Demeter’s Gingerale = I thought it would do well in the heat of Marrakech. Even drinking gingerale now is a crap shoot! lol!
I have had a lot of trips, both good and bad, but two stand out: I’m a scuba diver and went to St. Johns to a scuba resort and for some reason I was the only diver there. Once the divemaster realized I was good on air and with buoyancy, we went everywhere he could think of to show me. It was magical, being underwater and going places few other people got to see. There were old shipwrecks and exotic fish and octopi and manta rays. Eau de Merveilles kind of reminds me of it but not quite. The worst trip was when my parents decided they wanted to celebrate their 50th anniversary by touring Ireland in a van with us kids and grandkids. We drove 6-7 hours each day with sullen teenagers making it very clear they weren’t having a good time with all of us “old people.” Wish I’d had some L’Heure Bleue with me, at least I could have sniffed my wonderful-smelling wrists all day.
Wow, that St. Johns trip sounds wonderful. I’m fascinated by mantas.
Sullen teenagers, not-so-much wonderful. (I’d think Ireland with other people who wanted to be there would be pretty great, though.)
I can’t really recall any truly terrible vacations. I know I had a really good time when I was a little kid and a 10 year old going to Ireland and England to stay with my mother’s family. Unfortunately, I don’t remember enough about it. It’s more of an impression (even though I have been back since then). The vacation that stands out is a family vacation to Vermont when I was in college. We went hiking in the Green Mountains during the daytime and stayed in a nice timeshare condo at night (creature comforts beat tent camping all to heck!). We got to tour the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream factory (complete with eating ice cream at the factory and buying and eating by the pint at the condo-hey, I was probably all of 19 or 20– I could get away with it back then). Saw the Norman Rockwell museum (I am a shameless fan). If I had to give it a perfume, it would be Lauren, which I wore in college and still love (SOTD today).
Adore Vermont, spent summers there from age 6 or 7 to 13. I do remember liking my mom’s White Shoulders, and was intrigued by the ads for Yves Rocher that were featured in the backs of whatever magazines I was perusing. Actually fantasize about living there, on or near Lake Champlain. The winters can’t be much worse than they are here in the midwest.
Depending how far north you are, Lake Champlain’s winters could be considerably longer. Unless you live in, say, Minnesota.
Vermont really is beautiful! My first post-college job was with the Orvis Co., based in VT, and I thoroughly enjoyed my visits there as they were transferring their accounting department from VT to VA.
The worst vacation is the one I did not take 🙂
I’m enjoying reading about everyone’s best or worst vacations. I can’t even recall a bad vacation and the ones I recall were all super so I’ll just mention my cheapest vacation which occurred in the late 90s – RT air New York to Hong Kong and 5 nights in a 4 star hotel all for $500. I went with a group of 10 friends and we had a fabulous time. I don’t speak Cantonese but I managed! Had I been a perfumista then, I probably would have brought L’Occitane The Vert and/or Chanel No.19.
That sounds amazing. Plus, you would have smelled great.
I’m ready whenever 9 of the rest of you want to go.
Yes!the worst holiday is definitely the one I didn’t take. Couldn’t more agree with you.
On one of my husband’s business trips in China I joined him – 3 months, with weekends in Hong Kong. I bought ivory pearls at the “jade market”, which I cherish.
Man! $500 !?!? That’s insane! Sounds like a fun trip.
I’m with Pyramus – my favorite trips have been taken in the spring and fall.
I went to Spain last year in March and spent a day exploring Toledo, particularly its extravagant cathedral (truly impressive; my Catholic mother was moved to say “You begin to understand how the Reformation happened.” 🙂 ) It may be cliched, but an incense like Avignon really would have fit in quite nicely there.
I also went to Austin a few months ago (and adored it) and had happened to receive my bottle of La Fille de Berlin immediately prior. The scent itself has nothing to do with that city, but now I will associate it a bit with that trip.
What would a perfume called A Woman in Austin smell like?
I don’t know the local flora enough to be able to make a proper recommendation, but I’m thinking a barbeque note would be involved somehow. (The food was sooooo good.)
It wasn’t exactly a holiday but the first time I went to the Antarctic ( NZ Scott Base and Mc Murdo Ice Shelf) was incredible in terms of the absence of smells…no flowers, grass, pollution….so an amazing clarity that was almost spooky. I spent 10 days without washing…except teeth, and baby wipes….and had one bottle of perfume with me ( Feu d’Issey Miyake) which seemed incredibly loud in that environment, almost over bearing. It filled my tent with its scent and because of the 24 hour sun, and heat inside the tent, it gave my little shelter an almost jungle-like exoticism ( mixed with smell of damp soaks etc.)
Really sticks in my mind and arriving back in New Zealand, in Christchurch, on a hot summers day was blown away by the onslaught of grass, flowers, trees, cooking smells, etc etc. mind blowing experience
Wow! My 9 year old son and I watched a documentary about working in Antartica on Netflix and are now obsessed! It is a fantasty of mine to spend a winter there. They mentioned the absence of smell; must be so strange!
It is a magical place and so quiet….once you get away from the base ( and the Penguins). I would love to spend more time there,too.
Thanks for sharing, Kanuka. I had never heard before the scentlessness of Antarctica. Even the penguins aren’t smelly?
I spent a few days at a place called Cape Royds – where Ernest Shackleton had his hut – and there is a large colony of Adelie penguins, and South Polar Skuas (wonderful sea birds that travel as far as Siberia in their migration). It was summer, but cold and dry, and I don’t recall there being a strong smell…certainly nothing like you’d experience in a bird or seal colony in New Zealand. BUT I did have a toasty warm scarf around my face. Having said that…and you may want to tune out here…(stink alert)…we didn’t have toilets but just two buckets, one for peeing into, and one for pooing into. And even they didn’t smell too much. In fact, I can’t recall any smells…except damp clothing as it accumulated in my warm tent. Also, on the flight home (via US air force ) we were all handed lunch bags and everything was peanut butter (sandwiches, biscuits, bars…) and that was memorable for the smell.
I bravely tuned in, and I’m amazed! Thanks again for sharing and piquing my curiosity.
That sounds pretty mindblowing! I would love to experience that.
Incredible.
Over the past two years, the house we rent in northern NM sprang a hidden leak, then developed mold. At the same time a stalking neighbor took to smoking at my property line 4-8 hours every night. My breathing & recurrent bronchitis got so bad we decided I needed to move. Since my husband works in NC, that leaves moi to do the packing. It’s tough to recover from bronchitis, pack, and manage not to get *more* sick under that stress. So I RAN AWAY.
I’ve taken myself on a road trip to Vegas to sniff perfume. I expect to buy a long coveted bottle of Sycomore while I’m here. I arrived in Laughlin, camping for the night, about 9 our time. Will head into Vegas in the a.m. Wish me luck!
It’s hard to fathom what you’re going through, Siciliana. But I think I can imagine how much fun you will have sniffing perfume in Vegas! What an excellent idea! Do tell what you find there, alongside your coveted Sycomore.
And you’ll be refreshed and renewed for your packing when you get back. Think how great it will be when you are settled in NC in a clean house with no crazy neighbors!
OH YIKE. Mold and smoke.
So are you moving to NC? That’s not a short hop… hope you enjoy your TAKE ME AWAY! vacation.
That’s the way to do a break-away!Roadtripping to Vegas sounds like great fun!!Enjoy!Report back!And stay safe!:-))
Vacations when I was growing up in Oklahoma were of the pile-in-the-car-and-drive-three-states-over variety, almost always to Colorado because my parents love the mountains. Even when the trip wasn’t expressly to Colorado, we always ended up there at least for part of it, except for the one trip we took to Florida the summer before my 15th birthday (in 1994).
One trip that stands out was one that we took to the Grand Canyon. I don’t know how old I was.. I think 8-9 or so. The trip itself was fantastic. We went to the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, and up into Colorado to Telluride (this was before it got all Aspenized; at the time it was just a cute little ski town).
When we got back, there was a note from my aunt on the door saying “This will explain everything” or something like that. My parents’ first thought was that one of the cats died while we were gone or something, but no, that wasn’t it. We went inside to find all of our stuff in a huge pile in the living room and the carpet gone. My parents, as you might imagine, were freaking out. What happened was that something in the toilet broke and flooded the house, and it was discovered when my aunt came over to feed the cats. So our relatives took care of everything while we were gone, got the water out of the house, got the nasty carpet removed, etc.
We had to stay in a hotel for several days while my parents dealt with the insurance company. I don’t remember how long exactly we stayed in the hotel, but of course since I was 8 or so, it was just like an extension of vacation to me.
Oh yeah.. almost forgot the point of the post.. perfume I would pair with the Grand Canyon trip.. I guess since we were in the desert for a lot of it, I could go with L’Air du Desert Marocain or maybe Durango by En Voyage.
What’s Durango like? If you’ve tried Olympic Orchids’ Arizona, do you think it would fit?
It is hardly the most exciting vacation, but last year we took a couple of days and stayed at this huge resort hotel in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. There was a water park and it was winter but my 7 yr old daughter and I took a hike on the beach and followed the bird footprints in the sand, making up stories about what the birds were doing. (Having a party, of course!) We had breakfast at a funky coffee shop where they were kind and accommodated my 8 year old’s wish to have chicken soup for breakfast. We spent hours on the water slide, ate pizza in bed. Just really nice family fun. I wore Chanel Coromandel the whole time, and now whenever I wear it, I smile and think of that trip.
Delightful. 🙂
That sounds like my kind of vacation. So often I think we try so hard to pack activities into our vacations that we come back more tired and stressed than when we left. It sounds as if you got to relax and have fun and make some lovely memories.
I’m always trying to convince my husband that we don’t have to See Every Single Thing… we can just hang out, relax, have a leisurely breakfast… but the rush-around, relentlessly-tour kind of vacation is what he really likes. At this point, I can’t stop him, I can only hope to contain him. (Sometimes it takes me saying, “Screw this, I am NOT walking around any more lakes or up any more mountains! I’m going to the museum/art gallery/bookshop, and on the way back I’m going to sit down and have a giant latte, so there!” before he realizes that he’s overscheduled me.)
Actually, I am the one always trying to convince my husband to get up in the morning so we can see or do *something*. Left to his own devices, he would sleep past noon. I just don’t believe in trying to do everything. I prefer to allow enough time for each thing to be able to enjoy it thoroughly. Also, if the trip is more than a week, I try to schedule a “down time” day where we don’t have anything much scheduled and we can rest up a bit.
See, this sounds reasonable to me. Explore some, relax some. He only wants to relax after it’s dark and you can’t see scenery.
It’s like you described my husband. He wants to see everything there is to see and I prefer just to relax, sit at a cafe, watch people and do nothing.
It can be really frustrating! I feel like there’s never enough time for me to do the stuff I want to do… like I say, I enjoy museums. And the occasional afternoon at the pool.
Our family trip to Yosemite when I was approximately eight years of age. I long to travel west again and see Big Sur and Monterey. We were living in Monterey where my Father was attending the Navy Foreign Language Institute before deploying to Vietnam. I think this led my parents to spend a great deal of time with all of us together because they were not sure my Father would ever come home and even though he did, that terrible war never left him. I remember driving thru the tunnel and coming out in Yosemite Valley and tears filling my eyes because it was so beautiful. My Dad had to put our cooler way up in a tree every night so the bears would not get it. The Merced River is so cold that if you put your head underwater it was instant brain freeze, I fell in love with a mule named Rosie and cried when we could not take her home and the trees, the sky, the mountains! The fragrance that most perfectly evokes this wonderful place is any of the Juniper Ridge soaps, in fact it was purchasing and using one of their bar soaps that caused a flood of many of these memories. I am not sure they are even making bar soap anymore……
What a great story, thanks for posting it. Despite having lived in So Cal for years and going through Big Sur several times, I never did make it to Yosemite.
Beautiful! And I also love those soaps.
Sweet story! I love the mule part ♡ Yosemite is beautiful.
Thank you for reminding me about Yosemite. The itinerary for our next trip to the States just got quite a bit longer! I’ve been twice, and I was speechless (probably hard to believe) at the beauty. On our first visit, I saw a bear sitting in an apple tree, and in my naive Kiwi way thought it just adorably cute until a very harassed Ranger told me in short crisp words that it was dangerous and to go away. I think that was the first time, too, that anyone called me “ma’am”. It was very clearly code for “intensely irritating mad tourist person, I will be polite if it kills me!”
I wish I’d met the mule!
We rarely took actual vacations when I was a kid because Mom had been an airline stewardess on international flights for years and she and my Dad had travelled extensively before I was born. We did go on a few when I was really small but I don’t remember much about them. When I was about four we bought the property where my Mom lives now in the Texas Hill Country which became the destination for every school break. Unfortunately, most people who could do so tended to leave town and go someplace more interesting so, although I love it out here now, as a kid it was boring much of the time. Good thing I was a voracious reader so the days when it was too hot to go outside were saved. We did occasionally arrive to find a small disaster but they broke the monotony so don’t actually seem bad. We once had three squirrels fall down the chimney and expire in various places including my parent’s bed, and we had crickets somehow come up from the drains by the hundreds one year that were fairly awful, the occasional shrew got in and there are always scorpions. Since I truly can’t think of any other childhood family trip that didn’t involve attending a funeral, I consider all my early “vacations” both the best and the worst.
As for perfume to scent my memory, the sadly discontinued Aspen for Women would bring it all back in an instant.
God, I’m loving all of your stories. Thanks to everyone for the images, and the laughs.
Oh, those boring/wonderful trips! I wound up doing that a lot when I was a child, mostly visiting family who rarely had another child my age. So I read, and explored… somehow the dullness can spark the imagination.
LOVED Aspen for Women. LOVED it.
We spent all our summers on Cape Cod. I miss it so much – the smell of the beach: salt, clams, seaweed, copper; the smell of the people: sweat, Coppertone, baby oil, and often Coty Muguet des Bois (wonder what it smells like now?); Clairol Herbal Essence shampoo, Lifebuoy soap. Fried clams and donuts; bubblegum; ice cream. We sailed, swam, explored, got burned, played cards when it was rainy, went to Ptown and Hyannis occasionally. The drive-in was fun. My mother broke out the Chanel No. 5 for Sunday mass. I’d default to Muguet, if they still make it. I still visit, but as the guest of my sister, which changes everything. These days when I go to the Cape I bring Azemour or Opus 1, just a teeny dab; lots of Vodka, which makes the obligatory family cookouts manageable; books; and head-to-toe swim gear – SPF 50 tights, full rashguard, hats, SPF 50 umbrella. I mostly smell like heavy-duty sunscreen. The Cape is where my heart is.
I remember Clairol Herbal Essence well. My mother would buy nothing but. I’m picturing the green liquid and the smell which I didn’t like. I wanted my hair to smell like Finesse which all my friends were using. I need to make it out to Cape Cod one of these days…
I don’t remember Finesse, Elisa. But definitely go to the Cape – September is best. Most everything is still open (except the Wellfleet Beachcomber at Cahoun Hollow), the tourists are gone, it’s glorious. There’s OysterFest in Wellfleet, first weekend in October – quite a scene.
Good idea-after Labor Day and back-to -school. I like going places when they’re post season. It’s also cheaper. My husband has a wet suit so he’ll go in colder water in Oct.
And MY mom was the opposite, bought Finesse and wouldn’t buy Herbalessences. I liked the smell of both.
You were one of the cool kids!! 😀
Nope. Not cool – at least at MY high school. (not that that bothers me now.)
Totally understand that “pull” the seashore can have (no pun intended). I feel that way about the Pacific coast, but visited Cape Cod with a Bostonian friend years ago and can see how it could be equally compelling. Funny how the two coasts are simultaneously so similar yet so different.
SheriG, my favorite California beach is Stinson. What a gorgeous place.
We went to Maine in 2013 and Washington and Oregon in 2014, and I felt there was a lot of similarity as well.
Smells of summer vacation when I was 3 or 4 were Coppertone – and the outdoor shower in Rockaway Queens was all about wet wood and giant bars of Ivory soap.
But when I was 7 and we were in a house in Brooklyn with a backyard, my sister and I would spend the early morning filling a small plastic pool with the icy cold water from a hose and laze away the afternoon until the water warmed up enough to induce an afternoon swoon where the rosebushes and air and warmth combined perfectly. The best part was showering and shampoos with Lustre Creme shampoo. My hair would have blond streaks from the sun, my cheeks were rosy from sun, and my body was vibrating warmth from the sun. I’d put on my soft and thin flowered or striped girly pj sets and the smell of Lustre Creme enveloped me with every toss of my shiny beautiful waves of hair. (That’s why I wear perfume, I think.) Every morning was my eyes opening to the wondrous world of NO SCHOOL and endless hours to read comics, swim, bike or do crafts in the garden or sit on the steps under the entry while beautiful ozonic bluegreygreen thunderstorms threatened us while playing Authors or stringing beads.
We have been doing the Cape for that last few years because it’s centrally located to the various family that come, but it isn’t the beach we went to when I was young, so while I really enjoy it, it isn’t quite where my heart is. But it’s the beach, and I do love the beach!
A few years ago, I was in Verona, Italy. We had a sunny day trip to Venice, then back to Verona in the evening. Walked the ancient streets as the sun went down, wore Donna Karan Gold. The walls in the old stone houses and on the piazza were still hot from the sun. Me and my husband hade a very romantic dinner at a restaurant, I had fresh pasta with olive oil, salt and fried sage. Back to the hotel fotchange of clothes, I had a spritz of “Askew”, then we went to the open amphi theatre to watch the opera Aida. On stage, every actor was sprayed in gold. Suddenly the sky was all open, there was lightning and thunder and heavy rainfall. We came back to the hotel, wet thorough, and me smelling of “Gold” and “Askew”. I still believe our daughter was made that night;)
Lovely romantic story!
Thank you! It actually was insanely romantic!
What a great story!
Thank you! Still feels kind of unreal!
The most fabulous memory.Love this.
Thanks for your sweet comment!
Never had a ‘vacation’ in my life and that is a good few decades, lol
But I did spend my youth in Miami, FL surrounded by vacationers and so the scent that most reminds me of that time and place is anything gardenia.
My vacations growing up were generally camping in the Sierras and then, later, to our cabin in the Sierras. Mixed in with road trips to Montana or Wisconsin to visit family.
My favorite vacation was 13 days rafting down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. No fragrance on that trip, other than smelling like the river and Dr Bronner’s lavender soap for bathing in the river… Probably Juniper Ridge’s Sierra Granite would evoke both the best.
My honeymoon was Hawaii…plumeria in all forms of soap and lotions was the main scent.
Oh! And a couple of very self-indulgent nights in Sonoma where the primary smell was Sumbody (a Sebastopol company) Milky Rich soaps, lotions and room spray. I still have some room spray and it is an instant relaxer…beings me back in an instant to feeling pampered. Like warm milk laced with vanilla….
My worst “vacation” was one year in North Carolina to visit family sometime in July. It was horrible because my uncle decided to use my family and I to do some remodeling and I picked up a sinus infection. The worst part that my aunt, uncle and cousins didn’t have air conditioning and it was the middle of a heatwave. But on the way back, when we were going through the mountains, I was throwing up the whole time due to the medication.
My best vacation is when I flew all alone to Hawaii to see my nephew who was a month old. I was so happy to travel without my parents (esp. my mother) because I can only tolerate so much family togetherness and I loathe it because my mother has no concept of when people are in the bathroom, you don’t go barging in to start doing you makeup and hair. I love my privacy. Bad thing about that vacation, I had to survive on Bath and Body Works Sweet Pea lotion because I had no small bottles of any perfume since I was still new to perfumery.
I spent my honeymoon (1992) in B&BW Freesia body products. Was pretty much broke at the time, and B&BW was a splurge for me. I don’t really regret it.
My best summer(period!!)ever!It was actually work but felt like a vacation!I worked in Manchester UK the summer of 2005,and that year they had the mother of all heatwaves(38 degrees celcius most daytimes,I kid you not!)It was HOT.It also was beautiful,green and lush.I met incredible people and made fantastic friends.I made peace with being gay for the very very first time.I felt loved and accepted.I had fun AND worked my butt off!!I still have a bottle of my perfume of that summer:Crabtree&Evelyn Vanilla.Good times…
Manchester rocks! And what an experience …to feel loved and accepted. yay! And to have good perfume, of course.
It does ROCK!not just about football!Great art museums,old historic manors…shopping…LOVED every minute!
I just got goosebumps 🙂 What kind of work did you do there?
I’m a theatre nurse,I worked at the Greater Manchester Surgical Centre!We did mostly orthopaedic procedures,hip and knee replacements.Awesome,gratifying times!
I’m also a nurse! As is my husband. We fantasize about working in another (English speaking) country sometimes. Although I haven’t worked in hospitals for some time and can’t fathom going back to it. Kudos to you for doing OR (theater). Very stressful. Surgeons, ugh.
Haha!Nice!Hallo fellow nurse!Lots of perfumistas amongst the nursing fraternity as well!I stepped into theater straight out of college,and never looked back.Love it!And I did find my niche in my current position!(Ophthalmic surgery!)Less stress and fabulous colleagues both Drs and nurses.
Great story! My first out gay summer was pretty fantastic too, despite crazy temps and humidity, working, and being in a notoriously stinky city. Nothing like truth with freedom.
🙂 🙂 🙂
So true!!Truth and freedom!
L’chaim!
Yaaaaay! Congratulations on finding peace and happiness, even if it is ten years later! 🙂 So happy you can be yourself.
Lol!!HIIIIII!!!! Instagrammer friend!!How was your mini-sniffathon yesterday??x
Myrtle Beach. Before that I loved Carlsbad in California, bu t Mrytle was perfect. We stayed in an old motel with a wrap around porch on the beach, its probably torn down now. Should have been wearing Bronze Goddess.