L'Occitane en Provence is now coming to St. Pancras International station

I was recently in St. Pancras International station: - regrettably, I had to attend to a business engagement in London.  Tee hee!  When I was there, I noticed that L'Occitane en Provence is opening a store in the station on the 20th of March (two days' time at the time of writing).  I thought I would educate my readers about this chainstore, which seeks to bring the finesse of Provençale culture to the rest of the world.  Given Eurostar's plans to offer direct services to Marseille next year, I am hoping that Provençal tourism authorities and Eurostar will use this opportunity to tie up with L'Occitane en Provence to promote the area as a tourist destination, perhaps in the St. Pancras International branch.

Me personally, I don't tend to buy from them unless I am buying a cheaper alternative for a business client as a present if the person in question is too unsophisticated to know the difference between this and the highest quality stuff.  Sometimes, this has been necessary, on account of not finding out in advance of my arrival in the UK that I plan to visit the people in question.  In terms of what I personally use, I will spend whatever money is necessary to get the finest hand-crafted products locally in Marseille: - I'm the bee's knees (meaning that nothing but the best will do for me) and I must always look my best.  However, this doesn't mean that L'Occitane en Provence's products are poor quality: - it just means they aren't right at the very top of the quality scale, MDR.

If, for whatever reason, one is not able to travel to Marseille to buy the finest quality local handmade products and one doesn't want to do mail order, then I just adore going to L'Occitane en Provence.  When I lived in London, I sometimes had to do this.  Sometimes, I was working very long hours (despite my instincts as a Frenchwoman that efficiency was more important) and didn't have the time to travel to Marseille.  Under such circumstances, my parents would often send beauty products to me by post, but sometimes things didn't arrive and sometimes I was away overnight (e.g. attending post-show fashion show parties) and therefore unable to pick up the packages as normal.

A Frenchwoman just adores verbena perfume from Provence!  As Mireille Guiliano said, "French women know one can go far with a great haircut, a bottle of champagne and a divine perfume".  Verbena perfume is exactly that: - divine (in the non-religious sense of the word).  The aforementioned woman also correctly said that we would never forget to dress up, even for taking out the rubbish: - added to my list of things to never forget would be my verbena perfume.  Mireille also advises caution about which perfumes to use in which circumstances: - of course, all this is second-nature to a sophisticated Frenchwoman such as myself.

I would also never be without Savon de Marseille, one of the things that make Marseille so sophisticated and without equal.  As L'Occitane en Provence explains, there are several criteria that soap must fulfil in order to receive the classification "Savon de Marseille", most notably 72% of the content being olive oil.  L'Occitane en Provence sells something vaguely related under its "Bonne Mère" label, though they have craftily worded some of the variants as "Bonne Mère Marseille Soap", presumably to get around the fact that it doesn't fulfil the criteria for Savon de Marseille.  I have no doubt that this is an attempt to dress an industrial product up as a small-scale hand-made product.  This is exactly what is done with Bonne Maman products: - they use packaging and a name to create this image, but the image they create is decidedly phoney.  If one wants to find the real thing, one should visit various provençale market towns.

I have a whole list of toiletries that I would not like to be without.  This is one of my reasons for my continued enthusiasm for travelling by train: - I like to have all my luggage with me and there are extreme restrictions on the quantities of liquids that can be taken aboard a plane!  Carrying around her lipsticks, perfumes, soap, shampoo, conditioner etc around with her is one of the ways in which dainty Frenchwomen such as myself get passive exercise that helps keep us dainty: - we don't drive around everywhere and keep them in the "trunk" (an American corruption of "boot").

In summary, L'Occitane en Provence's St. Pancras International branch will not sell things that are good enough quality and stylish enough for me, but I hope it will help bring Marseille and the provençale culture to the uneducated masses and inform them about Marseille (and indeed the whole of Provence) as a tourist destination.  Tee hee!

Direct London-Marseille trains!

Finally, an important piece of news that I had been waiting a long time for: - I have heard some vaguely likely news that Eurostar is planning to do direct services from London to Marseille (also with a stop in Lyon), according to http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/Articles/2014/01/23/46730/record-results-for-eurotunnel.html .  One can step on a train at St. Pancras International, the terminus of Eurostar services in the UK where the height of sophistication is Fortnum & Mason (MDR), and see the Mediterranean Sea on the final approach to Marseille a few hours later!

Regrettably, I sometimes have to go to London on business even today, given all the creative trendy types there who tend to be interested in designing and wearing fashion, one area in particular being Old Street, which is situated just two stops away from Kings Cross St. Pancras station on the London transport system.

However, I will now be able to conduct my business in London and quickly get back to Marseille by train before I succumb to my thirst for sophistication.  I am not entirely sure which rolling stock model Eurostar will use for such services.  It is possible that they will use the original rolling stock, because as I understand things, the reason Eurostar made the decision to purchase new rolling stock is the fact that they wanted to install ERTMS equipment to allow them to access new routes, but found there was simply no space to do so.  Unfortunately, British railway engineers were daft enough to build their lines in a much smaller loading gauge than we trendy continentals, so they had to build the Eurostars to a smaller loading gauge.

However, when the British finally opened the second phase of the CTRL (Channel Tunnel Rail Link) in November 2007 (the first phase was opened in 2003), it resulted in Eurostar no longer needing a third-rail pickup system (only the British seem to be capable of being bonkers enough to use this on mainline trains) or a British loading gauge for its trains.  When the second phase of the CTRL was opened, Eurostar removed the third-rail pickup shoes (which had been causing problems in terms of damage to trackside equipment in France on account of drivers forgetting to retract them), though changing the loading gauge of a train is obviously not so easy.  Anyway, I digress, when Eurostar placed its tender for its new trains, it found it no longer needed to specify 750V compatibility (the CTRL uses 2*25kV), British loading gauge compatibility or third-rail pickup shoes.  Unfortunately, they are procuring the new E320 trains from Siemens, rather than Alstom (which obviously means they will be of lower quality).  Please note that the design of the trains has changed since the photo below.

However, none of the high-speed route between London and Marseille uses ERTMS (European Rail Traffic Management System, a signalling system intended to be promoted throughout Europe), so maybe they won't be using it on this route, given that they have already committed to using it on the route to Amsterdam (which uses ERTMS Level 2, which allows for in-cab signalling).  Even if they don't use them for Marseille routes, it won't be so bad though, as Eurostar has a contract with Pininfarina (an Italian design firm) for refurbishing them.  What I hope this will mean is that the trendy Europeans who have lives split between London, Paris and Brussels will include Marseille in their destinations and they will realise that it is even more sophisticated than Paris, with its residents sipping pastis on the Vieux Port.

I get tired of talking to people who think that Marseille is all about La Savine, the extremely rough area of the city where Bilal has lived since moving over from Mali.  Paris has its rough areas just like Marseille does and La Savine is not the only area of Marseille.  I look forward to seeing more trendy creative types in Marseille on account of the Eurostar services that are planned to serve the city as of next year.