Florence - Day 8:
We were all thrilled to return to Florence, one of our favorite cities in the world! We were more than happy to get a ride from the port to the city from NCL and then have about 5.5 hours on our own. We made a beeline over to the famous All'Antico Vinaio which supposedly has the world's best sandwich. We couldn't wait to try this out. The street outside was absolutely bonkers! There were two lines leading to different shops on both sides of the street. We hopped into the shorter one. We later learned that the shorter one we were in meant you ordered a sandwich as is, no changes allowed, while the other line allowed you to customize. Ryan and I both ordered a prosciutto sandwich with blue cheese and honey on it while the girls had a salami and cheese sandwich. We walked a few streets over and enjoyed eating these on the portico of the Uffizi. We all had to agree, these sandwiches were pretty stinkin' good!
We knew there was only one possible place to go after eating lunch...Perche No for our most favorite gelato!
We were excited to walk in and see all these delicious flavors again. I don't think any of us veered from our favorites though.
After our bellies were all filled up, we decided to enjoy the beautiful day and wander around.
As we were starting out, Lily looked at Snapchat and saw that our friend, Lucy Elrod, posted a picture that Lily was certain was in Florence. She looked her up on Life 360, and sure enough, she was just around the corner! We knew she was traveling with her mom, Julie, and a few other Stonehaven individuals - Melissa Hobson, Leah Colvin, and Mary Preston Harvey. We immediately started to hunt them down! Imagine their surprise when we found them just a few minutes later! That was a very fun reunion. Lucy, Julie, and Leah were together in line buying some chocolates while MP and Melissa were off near the Duomo. We told them we had to take them to get the world's best gelato and they readily agreed. We were too full to enjoy a second cup of gelato right then, but they were happy to, and they agreed it was quite delicious. From here we enjoyed walking around the square and taking some pictures together. It was so fun to catch up and hear about each other's adventures!
Soon, it was time for us to start heading back. We realized though that since it was the first Sunday of the month, admission to the Uffizi was free, so we stood in a brief line and thought "we'll just quickly duck in to see Botticelli's Birth of Venus." Well, I didn't remember until we started that this is not a museum you can quickly run through. It's incredibly huge, and you really kind of need to follow a certain path. We were hustling through and skipping over so many beautiful pieces of artwork. Finally we arrived in the Botticelli area. As soon as we walked in we saw his gorgeous piece called "Spring." Ryan actually teaches about this painting in his 7th grade history class, so we were glad to stop and admire it for a moment.
Then we turned a corner and there was "Birth of Venus." I love classical artwork like this, so it's almost breathtaking to see a piece like this up close. It's truly stunning.
After this we knew we had to hustle along, so we skipped a whole lot of exhibits and started the path out. Just then Lily looked at Life 360 again and saw that MP and Melissa were actually walking into the Uffizi right then! We kept our eyes open and sure enough, we ran into them very close to our exit which is just past their security screening entrance. How great to see two more friends from home!
After visiting with them for just a few minutes, we headed back over the library to meet up with the rest of the NCL group who needed a ride back to the port. This was such a wonderful day!
Nice - Day 9:
Our last day of the cruise took us over to the French Riveira, a place I've dreamed of visiting. It was just as beautiful as I thought it would be! We tendered in to the port, and then we hired an Uber to take us to "Old City" in Nice.
We had to stop and get a crepe to start the day out. How can you be in France and not get a crepe? We opted for a classic sugar crepe, and it was amazingly delicious.
We enjoyed eating the crepe and doing just a tiny amount of sightseeing and shopping before it was time for our class at Molinard which we'd found through Viator.
Molinard is a beautiful and classic perfume shop.
The class we signed up for was to make our own signature perfume. What a fun idea! There were seven of us at a table, and in the middle was a huge lazy susan of scents. In fact, there were 90 scents in all! Our instructor told us a little bit about how perfumes are made. They actually have three different layers to them which is why we were seeing three layers of scents. The ones at the top are called "top notes," and they're on the lighter side. This is the scent that someone may smell if you pass by them. It generally lasts about 30 minutes or so. In the middle section are the "heart notes." These are the ones that are truly your favorite; you'll be the one to smell them more than anyone else. On the bottom outer layer are the "base notes." These are the strongest of the scents, and these are the ones that people you stand near for a bit (as opposed to passing by) will smell; in a way, it's the scent they will begin to associate with you.
After hearing her explanation, the smelling began. We'd start at the very top and simply turn the circle around so everyone had a chance. Every so often, you'd stop and sniff a container of coffee beans to cleanse your smelling pallet. This part was pretty fun as you immediately knew if you really liked a scent or not.
If you liked a scent, you would dip one of these little sticks into the jar, and you'd write the name of the scent on it as a marker. At the end, she asked us to narrow it down to 3-4 scents per layer.
Once we each had our favorite scents written down, she would come around to see what each person had picked out. Using her knowledge, she'd pull together 1-3 from each layer and make a little fan. Then, she's run in the fan in front of you a few times to get your reaction. If it wasn't what you wanted, she could change it up some. For example, I had a lot of fruity scents that I loved, but when she put them together, I felt like I was in the middle of a candy store which was just too much. She took some of the fruits out and substituted in some floral scents and even one called fresh water; again, all of them were scents I had picked out though and I liked them. On this next pass, I absolutely loved the combination. We each had a 50 mL bottle in front of us. She would look at the combination we settled on and write down for you to put in 8 mL of one scent, 3 mL of a second, 11 mL of a third, etc. until it added up to 50 mL. It was really cool how she was able to do this and actually know what worked well! We then used little droppers to put the prescribed amount in to each of our jars. When it was over, we each had our own unique perfume scent to bring home with us!
This was so cool! All four of actually really enjoyed this activity, and we all loved the scent we brought home. I'm pretty sure we've each been using our scent pretty much every day.
Here's what our end result looked like: a beautiful bottle of perfume as well as our diagram which had our chosen scents and measurements on it.
We handed those in to her at the end, and she wrote up (in beautiful penmanship) our certificates. Each of our certificates tells what scents are included on each layer. The best part though is each one is assigned a number which agrees with our diagram. Molinard catalogs each unique perfume that is made, so that at any point in the future, you can call them up and provide the date and id number; they'll make another batch up and send it to you.
When the class was over, we found a cute little sidewalk cafe to enjoy brunch. It was exactly what we'd hoped for. The food was outstanding. Some of us enjoyed homemade lemonade while others enjoyed a rich hot chocolate (hot milk with chocolate pieces in it to stir and melt). Ryan was actually the only one who ordered a croissant. He gave each of us a little bite, and well, yeah, we ordered another. The croissants really are that good here.
I ordered toasted brioche with nutella, chantilly cream, and berries. It was fantastic.
After brunch, we decided to simply walk around and enjoy some sightseeing. It was such a beautiful day, and it really wasn't too crowded, so this was a lot of fun.
Eventually though we knew we had to head on back to the boat. Ryan and I sat out on our balcony for quite awhile afterwards to simply enjoy the view. It was lovely.
We enjoyed a wonderful last night on the boat, including our best dinner in The Haven restaurant. It was hard to believe our incredible cruise was over!
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