When I am in Italy with my Glam Italia Tours we often come back to our apartment or villa after a long day of sightseeing and wind down with a crisp, cold glass of prosecco and a platter of snacks, otherwise known as a charcuterie board. It is the perfect way to welcome the evening ahead in Italy.
When I’m in Paris (if you are reading this blog post the week it went live, I’m there right now) I adore going for picnics. We go shopping on a food street like Rue Cler, and pick up a baguette, a bottle of champagne or wine, and then wander in and out of cheese shops, fruit shops, meat shops, and build the bits and pieces needed for a chic, Parisian picnic. Which looks remarkably like a charcuterie board!
When I am home from my trips and want to re-live the glorious nights on our balcony overlooking the Amalfi Coast, or the early evenings in San Gimignano, I whip up a charcuterie board and pop an ice cold bottle of prosecco. When I am pining for soirees in Paris, or maybe just need a break from the realities of real life, a charcuterie board dinner with a glass of Sancerre is the perfect escape.
My travelers always take photos of the spreads I put out and tell me they try to duplicate them when they get home.
To help both them and you spice up any gathering or any evening, Gifts.com compiled a guide on how to build the perfect charcuterie board. Mix and match meats, cheeses and accompaniments for the ultimate hors d’oeuvre. You can use this guide to help you choose your meats and cheeses, and to put the whole thing together.
Not only will your guests be impressed with the selection, they’ll be excited to customize their appetizer to their liking.
Bon appetit!
I do not have affiliate marketing with Gifts.com, this post has not been sponsored and they have never even sent me products to try. This post is not a review. It is hopefully an inspiration!
Paris is so much more than the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and Champs Elysees. Although you really do have to go see all the major sites in beautiful Paris you really should experience some other fabulous things that don’t necessarily find their way into the tour books.
Right now I am in Paris, the City of Light, starting out the 2017 Glam Italia Tours (week one: Paris), and we are doing some interesting, fun and fabulous things that you won’t find in any of the tour guides! Are you following me on Instagram? I’m posting new travel pics daily, so you can follow along with us. There will be lots of new travel posts happening over the next few weeks and then again when I get back home, so stick around!
Here is a cool article that I found on Harpers Bazaar.com about one of the places we are visiting this week in Paris. Enjoy!
This Extraordinary New Museum Doesn’t Actually Have Any Art
At the Grand Musée du Parfum in Paris, visitors smell their way through curated exhibitions of scent
In ancient Egyptian times, the first perfume known to mankind was called “kyphi,” incense made from myrrh, grapes and honey. With a recipe that dates back to 1500 B.C., it was used for sacred rituals and healings, thrown over hot coals so the scent would rise with smoke.
Kyphi has now been carefully brought back to life by a group of contemporary perfumers at the new Grand Musée du Parfum in Paris, so anyone can be taken back in time with one ancient whiff.
Showcasing over 60 different scents, the museum traces the evolution of perfume to its present day with odours in smelling bowls and artificial flowers which spray mystery scents.
“The museum is a tribute to fragrance, our sense of smell and how perfume is a symbol of French artistry,” said the museum’s CEO, Sandra Armstrong, whose favourite scent in the museum is kyphi, which she notes as “both spicy and sweet at the same time.”
Set inside an 18th-century mansion, formerly Christian Lacroix’s maison de couture, the museum opens with “Perfume Stories and Histories.” It shows couples who changed the game in perfume history, like the love story between Cleopatra and Marc-Antony alongside business partnerships, like Catherine de’ Medici and her personal perfumer who introduced perfuming to France.
“Perfume wasn’t always used for the art of seduction, nor was it always in a glass bottle.”
Perfume wasn’t always used for the art of seduction, nor was it always in a glass bottle. With a collection of pomander and potpourris, the museum shows how scents evolved in ancient Rome, where people used perfume in bath rituals, to the Middle Ages, where many carried scented sponges in small boxes.
It was Italian perfumer Jean-Marie Farina who drenched the French court in eau du cologne, which he invented in 1695, and here the museum has recreated his famed scent: the Tonkin musk.
The museum has an Alice in Wonderland-style “Garden of Scents” with artificial flowers, each of which spray obscure scents. “The fire of a chimney, fresh raspberries, basil herb or the sea landscape, it’s about the overlooked scents of everyday life,” said Armstrong.
There’s also a section which pulls back the mysterious veil of the perfumer’s process. “The Art of the Perfumer” traces the artist’s craftsmanship from raw materials to final product, including a historic perfume lab recreated from 1775, which is modelled after Marie-Antoinette’s perfumer Houbigant, who made the queen’s favourite perfume, a mix of orange blossom, iris and cedar.
Le Grand Musée du Parfum
It isn’t all dusty artifacts, either. The installation entitled “Scent Constellation” takes a traditional “perfumer’s organ” (their cabinet of scents) and makes it into an electronic music symphony.
“Perfumers are both artists and scientists,” said Armstrong. “We’ve connected fragrances to their ability to unravel the mystery of their composition.”
Le Grand Musée du Parfum
Some might also find their favourite modern perfumes lined up in the museum’s hall of fame, where over 50 perfumes are celebrated. Fragrances like Calvin Klein’s CK One is featured for bringing unisex perfume to the mainstream in the 1990s. “It was a milestone in fragrance because it paid tribute to social culture,” said Armstrong. “Perfume has no gender.”
This privately-funded museum, which cost $7 million to create, seems to have been built purely on the passion of the olfactory sense. “It’s about the sensation and enjoyment from our noses,” said Armstrong. “The sense of smell is the core of the museum experience.”
