The woman who sat down across the aisle from me on my train trip from Florence, Italy, to Milan could have been Gina Lollobrigida’s younger sister. But it wasn’t the striking resemblance or her drop-dead elegance that intrigued me, it was the intoxicating fragrance of flowers and spices that wafted from her carry-on bag on the overhead shelf.
Halfway to Milan, when curiosity overcame courtesy, I took a deep breath and said, to no one, “something smells amazing.” The senora leaned over and, in English as flawless as the rest of her, “it is the potpourri made by the monks at Farmacia Santa Maria Novella. I go to Florence every year to buy some.” In a nano-second, I knew that the first stop on my next visit to Florence would be Santa Maria Novella.
Four decades and several bags of potpourri later, the scent still conjures a vision of that glamorous woman and the beauty of Florence.
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That’s because our sense of smell lingers longest in the brain and does a better job than a picture or a souvenir at awakening a memory. Photos or tchotchkes can remind us of where we were and what we did, but an aroma can zip us back to a memorable experience.
That’s also because smell is the only one of our senses that goes directly from the many receptors in the nose to the olfactory bulb, the part of the brain that actively processes smell.
“Scent moves us through years and across miles with ease,” says Saskia Wilson-Brown, founder of the Institute for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles. “Smell is a fully immersive experience that can transport you emotionally to a place.”
Although the smells we encounter on land or at sea can be our most intense travel experiences, it’s easy to overlook them at the time.
Here are six much-loved scents, each connected to a destination with promise of a lasting memory. Why not let your nose lead the way to your next vacation?
Chocolate
If your mouth waters just thinking about chocolate, a visit to Hershey, Pennsylvania, will treat you to a see, touch, smell and — of course — taste experience that you’ll remember for a lifetime.
The “Everything Chocolate town is 24 kilometres east of Harrisburg, the state capital. It gets its name from Milton Hershey who founded Hershey Chocolate Company in 1894. Chocolate smells greet you when you reach the edge of town. Then you discover the streetlights on Chocolate Avenue are shaped like giant Hershey’s Kisses. You learn that Hershey can make more than 70 million Milk Chocolate Kisses every day. And in Hershey World, thanks to strategically placed scent machines and cookies baked daily, the aroma lingers for your entire visit.
“Hershey chocolates have a distinct aroma,” says Todd Kohr, Chocolate World marketing manager. “It’s a dairy smell because, rather than milk powder, we use fresh liquid milk from 26,000 cows for a single day’s production of milk chocolate.”
The Chocolate Making tramcar ride lets you follow cocoa beans on their delicious journey, starting with the dairy farm and ending with a sweet treat. The free tour at the Hershey Chocolate World attraction promises to cast a magical spell on the child in everyone. For a nominal fee, you can take part in other attractions such as a tour of the town on the Hershey Trolley where you learn the history and legacy of Milton Hershey or the Chocolate Tasting Adventure which provides an opportunity to create your own candy bar or learn more about chocolate.
Forests
Anyone who has ever gone for a walk in the woods knows how good the air smells. You smell different things in different woods, depending on the trees and vegetation. Damp moss, fresh rain, evergreens, decay, even a dash of spice. And in the case of 800-year-old cedar redwoods on the Pacific rainforest floor, you uncover the scent of a sauna or a freshly sharpened lead pencil.
Ucluelet — on the west coast of Vancouver Island, a 30-minute drive south of Tofino — is a well maintained, nine-kilometre, family-friendly trail that gently winds along the rocky shoreline.
It’s a favourite hike for Leigh McAdam, founder of the outdoors blog — HikeBikeTravel.com and author of the book Discover Canada: 100 Inspiring Outdoor Adventures.
“What you get here is a feast for the senses, particularly when it comes to smell,” McAdam says. “The clean salty tang of the sea is omnipresent along the coast but dissipates when the trail moves inland. Then you’re treated to the pleasant musky sweet smell of decay in the forest mixed with overtones of fragrant cedar and pine. This is a trail your nose won’t soon forget.”
Coffee
If your idea of heaven is to wake each morning to the smell of good coffee brewing, Seattle, Washington, is waiting to welcome you. Coffee culture thrives here.
Starbucks may be the mother ship, but you will find craft coffee shops on every corner. Pike Place Market, reportedly the oldest continuously operating market in the nation, is the city’s most visited attraction. 1912 Pike Place is where Starbucks, which now boasts more than 33,000 stores in over 75 countries around the world, had its beginning in 1971. At Starbucks Reserve Roastery in the Capital Hill neighbourhood, you can observe the entire coffee-making process, and follow up with a latté or a special roastery creation.
I gave Seattle a high five as one of America’s most pleasant cities for a long weekend visit. Nestled between Puget Sound and Lake Washington and surrounded by the snow-capped Olympic Mountains and the volcanic Cascade Range, Seattle more than deserves its “Emerald City” nickname. Amid all this natural beauty, the city struts the vibe of a modern metropolis and still maintains the appeal of a small town — one with a definite coffee flavour.
Want to travel further for a steaming cuppa? Coffee houses in Vienna are such an important part of Viennese culture that they were listed by UNESCO in 2011 as an Intangible Heritage.
Truffles
In search of an insanely aromatic, delicious, misshapen fungi — the product of a freakish marriage between fungus and tree root and reputed to be the most seductive and expensive food in the world — I was tromping through mossy woods in Provence on a brisk day in February. A slightly built Frenchman with woolly toque, mud-caked boots and leather satchel slung over one shoulder, and a little dachshund that answered to Câline, were leading a small group of curious visitors.
Câline looked like a run-of-the-forest dachshund, but she was the indispensable partner of Jean Spati, a lifelong truffle hunter or “rebassier”, each year digging up more than her weight in black Périgord truffles — Tuber melanosporum – the most highly prized French truffles that sell at up to $4,000 per kilo depending on variety and quality.
We had been walking for about five minutes when suddenly, Câline, nose to the ground, began to dig. Monsieur Spati was immediately on her tail, hand-made trowel at the ready. His job was to secure the truffle before the dog could damage, or worse, devour her find. Was it a setup? You bet! Like most demonstration truffle hunts in Europe, Sati had buried the truffle in advance. We got the picture minus a potentially long, chilling hunt. We learned about truffle hunters’ formidable agricultural challenges and their closely guarded, secretive hunting grounds and we returned home with a tale about a scent described by the late food writer Josh Ozersky as “a combination of newly plowed soil, fall rain, burrowing earthworms and the pungent memory of lost youth and old love affairs.”
Healthy vacations have never been more essential for you, the family and the farm. But where to go? Here’s a great idea: let your sense of smell and a favourite aroma guide you on a trip worth sniffing at!
Lavender
You don’t have to travel all the way to Provence to enjoy the heavenly aroma of colourful fields of lavender. Dr. Sean Westerveld, ginseng and herb specialist for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs estimates that in the Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario and B.C., there are between 100 and 120 active lavender farms.
The town of Sequim (pronounced “Skwim”), Washington, at the centre of a thriving farming community, has earned the reputation as the “Lavender Capital of North America.” Lavender is as much a tourist attraction as it is an agricultural industry. Lavender fields have been blooming here since the mid-1990s. Sequim’s annual average rainfall of 16 inches provides a perfect setting for sustainable lavender crops. From June to early August, when the plants are at their showy best, dozens of farms are open to the public.
But if France is on your agenda, in July and August the fields of northern Provence are swathed in purple and the Lavender Museum in Coustellet offers a fascinating glimpse into the history of lavender cultivation in France.
Salt-scented air
If the tang of ocean air, the fishy smell of a lobster pound and the aroma of sunscreen bring back happy vacation memories, you can rekindle them this summer in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.
Old Town Lunenburg is one of only two urban North American communities designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site, with 70 per cent of the original colonial buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries still showing off their colourful façades.
Discover Nova Scotia’s maritime heritage, hear salty tales of rum-running and marvel at the museum’s extraordinary aquarium with the Bluenose II docked nearby.
May to October is whale watching season here and the dining scene will delight any foodie. Near Lunenburg, the sea caves at The Ovens wait to be explored or you can spend the day kayaking in the shallow waters of Blue Rocks.
More information
- Santa Maria Novella: us.smnovella.com
- Hershey Chocolates: chocolateworld.com
- Wild Pacific Trail: wildpacifictrail.com
- Seattle: visitseattle.org
- Lunenburg: novascotia.com/places-to-go/regions/south-shore/lunenburg
- Truffles: Richerenches, the world’s most famous truffle market, is held every Saturday morning from mid-December to March. avignon-et-provence.com
