Energie!

One of the best parts of travel is finding the local brands that you just love.  When I first came to France in 1987, liquid hand soaps were relatively new.  There was a brand, Pousse Mousse, that sold a lavender scented soap that was amazing.  It smelled more like the nicest men's cologne you've ever imagined.  So, of course, I brought back three bottles and jealously guarded each tiny pump until it was gone.

On our last trip, when we stayed two weeks in Villefranche-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean coast, I fell in love with this wonderful shampoo/conditioner.  It's a cheap, grocery-store bought Garnier brand--nothing to write home about (and yet I am writing about it, hmm).  What makes it so wonderful is that it's avocado oil and shea butter scented.  Seriously.  It's a wonderful break from the flowery, fruit shampoo Hell I find myself in at home so often.  It's gentle, simple and such a refreshing break from normal that I think I'm going to haul home a few bottles.

The shower gel, ah, the shower gel!  I bought a store-brand shower gel as a joke our first day here.  Of the four scents to choose from, I bought Energie since we were fighting jet lag.  It's advertised as a tropical mix of gingembre and guarana.  I figured it'd be fruity, but it's not.  It's a piquant little squirt of, "oh, isn't that peppy?" in the shower.  I already sent two bottles home with Bryan and will bring two more with me.

Not making the picture, but worth an honorable mention is the already-so-well-loved-that-it's gone La Marseillaise lotion.  The packaging shows this to be a traditional, old school French brand--sort of the Johnson's Baby Lotion of France, I suspect.  But here's the twist.  It absorbs into your skin in about 1/10th the time my lotions do back home.  Granted, I slather up with body butters and extra-heavy fruity B&BW stuff most days, but even by cheap Jergen's lotion standards, this stuff is amazing.  When I finished it, I decided to try a lotion marketed specifically as "quick absorbing" just to perform scientific experiments on it.  Disappointingly, it's no faster than my Marseillaise stuff, but smells better, so I'm still declaring it far superior to grocery store lotion back home!

To be thorough in my product review process; the dish soap, laundry soap, bleach and toilet paper aren't much to crow about.  The generic toilet paper is pink, however, which delights the girls, so I deal with the cheapness of it.

The less said about that, the better, methinks.