After marvelling at the roses blooming as if overnight in our own Villa Ndio garden we went to the much anticipated annual Rose Expo in Grasse, which occurs each year in mid-May. The event features beautiful flowers mostly roses of course, and lots of lovely people. Highlights included photo ops with the past and current Miss Grasse (the latter crowned a week before the Expo), and their entourage of Rose Expo princesses. We also met up with the mayor.
Note: This post is one of an on-going series focusing on my own personal experiences visiting interesting places and events throughout Europe. A full list of blog posts can be found on the “Peppy’s Blog” drop down menu. All of the photos in this post were taken by me, except for the one just below which is a photo of the promotional poster.
This year, Expo Rose adopted “Flower Power” as its theme, with references to the 1970s and the Hippie movement. Images of the theme were everywhere, including in the promotional poster: “flower power”, the power of flowers, featuring the 2017 Miss Grasse. Another favorite of mine was the circa 1970 Citroën 2CV (fondly knick named “deux chevaux”, or two horses — a beloved French classic), inundated with a wide variety of flowers. While it is not the VW Beetle from my own hippie memories it is an delightful and fitting substitute,
The deux chevaux was “planted” on a small mound near the south-west end of Place du Cours Honore-Cresp, where the Wednesday market sets up. Throughout the four days of Expo Rose, which took place over the extended weekend of 10-13 May , this prominance was lined with merchants from area nurseries selling mostly roses, but some other stunning flowers as well.
When we arrived in Grasse on Saturday, two days after the beginning of festivities, we entered into the pedestrian area from the far side, north-east side, as parking was hard to find. We came down into the pedestrian area and found, in the Place aux Aires, a wonderful festive scene, with the old fountain smothered with flowers and graced at its base the newly crowned Miss Grasse 2018, her predecessor, and two dauphines — runner up princesses. My cameras started working overtime. I handed one of them to Kathy to take the featured image for this post, with me as the proverbial thorn among the roses. I took many profile photos of the young Rose Expo women, and of all the trappings before we walked on down through the throngs and made our way up to the Place du Cours Honore-Cresp. There we came upon the mayor and had a brief chat with him.
