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Showing results for tags 'Liliths Winter Travelogue'.
Found 44 results
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Lilith learning the art of spycraft at Deutsches Spionagemuseum. A pre-teen superspy’s secret identity: white pear, apple pulp, golden musk, and fossilized amber. this unfortunately went all wrong on me from the beginning. in the imp, it smelled like a really soft, fruity body spray, which was...ok. nothing that was blowing me away. when i put it on though, it turned to pool chlorine - wtf?? i'm going to wait until my period is over to re-test this and see if it was a chemistry thing.
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Lilith at Petersfriedhof, the oldest cemetery in Salzburg. As the bells of Stift Sankt Peter tolled around us, we wandered through the graves and the catacombs that date back to Late Antiquity. Benedictine incense drifting on a frost-chilled December breeze. this is lovely. the description is dead on. it's an almost nag-champa type scent on the drydown for me...the frost-chilled breeze isn't sweet or creamy, it just lends an ethereal vibe to the incense. low to medium throw on me. very pretty - i may consider adding a bottle to my beloved incense blend collection.
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Honestly, there are a lot of smells in any given airport that I probably shouldn’t translate into a perfume, but this particular scent was inspired by this radiant ribbon tree at Heathrow and the joyful little girl standing in front of it. Sparks of snow-white musk dotted with shining bulbs of blackcurrant, plum, and lavender. this is very pretty, but i think i was hoping this would be sweeter than it is. something about the snow + white musk reads as ambergris to my nose. it's lovely and cold, strong but not overpowering and definitely not foody - the blackcurrant and plum add more of a purple herbal vibe to it than *FRUIT*, and the lavender compliments it nicely. medium to strong throw. it's not something i would reach for often, but it's very sophisticated and really well blended - i may have to go for a bottle!
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Lilith: “Nooooo! I don’t want to leave Salzburg!!!! I loved how it snowed, and I loved the food. I piled up on bread, mostly, but the bread was really good. And honeycomb. And bacon and sausage and eggs. I loved the outdoor hot tub thingymajigger. Being in a spa when it’s so cold outside is fun. I love the Christmas markets and I got unicorn and bat stuffy heat packs which is so cool.” Brian: “I agree with Lilith’s sentiment on this. All the cities we visited were great, but Salzburg was the most charming. I loved the Christmas markets in Berlin, but Salzburg was… – quainter? I loved the gruff and distant replies we got to questions we posed to locals. I LOVED THE KRAMPUSLAUF. You can’t beat a Krampuslauf. Plus, I got a fancy hat. A legit fancy Tyrolean hat. I love that hat.” This scent? Sachertorte. So being from Austria, home of Sachertorte, it's cool owning a perfume inspired by it. In the bottle I get booze? 😅 Yes some soak the chocolate sponge cake with liquor something. So that figures. On my skin that booze fast disappeares, I'm glad! It's chocolate, for sure but not just. I think I get some sort of fruit jam, but not sure which one. Interesting scent though! 😅 Sachertorte is chocolate sponge cake, filled with apricot jam or sometimes with red currant ("Ribisel") jam and glaced with dark chocolate frosting. The jam is always without any pits.
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Brian: “No one else would come out onto the rink. It was just Lilith and me skating, and Beth and Ted were trying to get pictures. I was trying to teach Lilith to skate while dodging penguins and other tourists. There’s a pretty funny photo of Lilith falling and me lunging to catch her, and the funny part is that it’s angled in a way that almost looks like I’m pushing her down. We skated together a ton that night, and she insisted that we go back again the next night.” Lilith: “I’ve ice skated before when I was littler with a thingy, but this is the first time I really learned how to ice skate. Unkie helped me when I wasn’t using the penguin and he skated me with a lot and helped me learn how to do it. I fell down a lot, but that’s fine.” Sugared chestnut and powidltascherl. Wow first one... That's so good! Sweet powidl. Powidltaschen are sweet sugared pureed plums inside a sweet potato dough, covered in sweet crumbs. I smell the sweet plums and a doughy scent. But no chestnuts. Still very yummy! 🥰
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Inspired by the deep purple hues of the night we arrived in Austria: icy air, plum musk, and blackberry with a beam of amber light. Am I first? This truly is a purple type of scent. The plum musk jumps out first, with the blackberry just adding some extra fruitiness, then mellows into the warmth of the amber as it dries down. Light to medium intensity and throw, so I predict I will be slathering this one! Will be interesting to see how it ages.
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Okay, this isn’t a photo of Lilith, but it IS a photo of a dessert I had on the first night in Salzburg. It was delicious and amazing and perfect, and it gets its own scent. Baked apples in cinnamon cream, with a blueberry and raspberry garnish. Scheiterhaufen Vom Boskop Apfel is a sweet and fruity scent, I do get the blueberry at first, with a tiny bit cinnamon and cream. But that fades and what's left is slightly cinnamon sweet cream. Until now I don't really get apple... But it's an interesting scent
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I know I’ve talked about Lilith’s experiences with Krampus for years, so I hesitate to reiterate them here. She loves Krampus. Her love for Krampus easily equals her love for Santa, so in 2017, we took her to the Gnigl Krampuslauf in Salzburg (which we memorialized in our 12 Lashes From Krampus and Perchtenläufe series). She was enraptured. She was charmed by the wee little kid Krampuses, the Perchten, the switches, and the chains. She loved the snow and icicles, the roadside cider vendors and the bitterly cold air. I love this photo; it really seems to encapsulate her joy that night: the sparkle in her eyes and her bursts of laughter. Ice, leather, and snow warmed by a steaming stein of children’s glühwein. At The Krampuslauf In the bottle: fruity snow with grape juice. On the skin: this is very snowy! The snow note in here is like the one in Snow Bunny or Snow Angel, a sweet, slushy note with pine and berry accents to it. the berry-like nature of the scent is enhanced by the children’s gluhwein, which is a kind of red grape juice on my skin. Sweeter and less heady than the usual BPAL red wine, this is a kind of fruit punch scent with a little bit of what could be citrus peel? But the snowy note dominates. I don’t smell leather, but compared to Ted’s Krampuslauf scent, this is much more fruity and heavier on the ‘BPAL Snow’ accord whereas Ted’s is more frosted lavender Dorian with a hint of leather. Gradually the red fruity note morphs from grape into something almost like maraschino cherry on me, before it ends up smelling a bit like the port note from past Yules, maybe the Port Jelly scent from the Miskatonic collection. The snow note has turned into a crisp icy juniper now. It’s interesting but I smell something in here that reminds me of plastic, like the plastic of a Krampus mask perhaps? Normally I’m not keen on it but it works here. Verdict: this is a fun, playful Yule scent! I was kind of hoping for more of the leather to add depth and darkness, but the snow and fruitiness go nicely together. Backup? I’ll keep this bottle, but I prefer the Post’s Salzburg Krampuslauf scent. I might experiment with layering the two…
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A lesser-known work of art in vibrant 21st century polychrome: vanilla cream, coconut, fossilized amber, and white sandalwood. This is absolutely stunning. It reminds me a bit of Obatala, but *fancy*. I wouldn't call this a foodie perfume at all. It's classy and mature.
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Lilith in the Hall of Mirrors: marble and gilded bronze, Venetian mirrors and a drop of poison. Galerie des Glaces is, like, somebody took all the glass from House of Mirrors and put it all in really over-the-top ornate gilded frames. i should mention that i adore House of Mirrors (not the HG version, just the perfume oil version). so, in the bottle and wet before it really settles into my skin, it is very House of Mirrors~ish, but with something warmer and maybe peach/apricot~ier around the edges. but after an hour or so it morphs almost exactly into Casmir but without that Chopard back-note. i also like Casmir and have many variants of it, just FYI. based on the notes, i think a lot of folks who might really like this might've skipped it so i wanted to post my thoughts even if they're not so much a review as a babbling stream of comparisons. amber-y (but not powdery), glass, almost ozone but without the high-pitched headacheyness, almost white musk without the detergent-y-ness. petrichor in a warm fuzzy sweater, and something peach-ish hovering in there somewhere. such a pretty poison.
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The only icicles we get at home happen when we have a fridge malfunction. Plucked from the walls of Hohensalzburg Fortress: a glassy frozen snowdrop with whipped cream and glacial musk. This smells like Pink Snowballs, but with snowdrop instead of rose. The musk and whipped cream end up giving it a shaving cream vibe, which is incredibly nostalgic for me. Subtle. I'll stick to wearing this as a bedtime scent since I find it relaxing, but I don't necessarily want to smell like it.
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An absolutely stunning view of the Baroque historical district from high atop the Festungsberg. A shiver of iced chocolate and white amber. In the bottle: yummy milk chocolate! On the skin: ohhh! This is the perfect milk chocolate and amber. It’s like Gelt, but with a paler, cooler amber note. The white amber has a more perfumey smell (it’s the amber from 51), less vanilla-like than the golden Gelt amber, but it blends really nicely with that milk chocolate, which smells creamy and smooth like a Galaxy bar. It’s not icy like the Chocolate Slush smell, I don’t smell any obvious snow or frost notes here other than the slightly chilly amber note. The amber is almost skin musk-like to me, weirdly warm and cool at once. It almost reminds me of Bastet’s Amber by NAVA, but a bit stronger and more upfront on my skin. Chocolate and amber are in equilibrium for a while. Over time it becomes a crystal shard of amber dusted with chocolate. Not too sweet. There’s a dry quality to the amber, in the way that white wine is dry (but it doesn’t smell like white wine.) Then the chocolate and amber seem to take it in turns as to which one is strongest. Verdict: I think this might be my favourite chocolate-amber because the white amber note tempers the chocolate’s sweetness and makes it a sophisticated gourmand, rather than a purely foody scent. If you like Gelt or Chad, you must try this. Backup: Very likely.
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Even in utero, Lilith had a full head of hair. She looked like a Monchhichi when she was born, and from the moment I first saw her, I called her Bear. She’s my Baby Bear, Bunnybear, Bearington, Beanie Bear. I made up bear bedtime stories for her – we still tell each other bear jokes all the time. Every time I see a bear video or meme, I save it for her, my little Princess Bear. While we were in Berlin, we made a point of taking photos with as many Buddy Bears as possible. They’re intended to symbolize peace, tolerance, and understanding between religions, nations, and cultures worldwide, and Lilith knows how important that is – especially now. Sweet buttered rum, brown musk, wildflower honey, tonka bean, labdanum, and clove. In the bottle: buttered rum with a bit of honey. On the skin: is there cider in here? I smell something reminiscent of a crisp fizzy apple. But it’s predominantly the buttered rum, which isn’t as strong and cloying as Kill Devil or Grog were on me. This rum is sweet and caramelised, a dark spiced rum with golden honey on top. The whole thing reminds me of a mix of hot mead, mulled cider and rum punch, like what you’d have at a European Christmas market. The clove isn’t blatant, but its warm spiciness seems to enhance the scent’s festive feel. The weirdly cider-like note then tones down and the rum and honey melt into each other really nicely. The labdanum is there, that syrupy resinous base grounding the sweeter notes, and I think there’s a hint of tonka (in here, it has an almost woody smell) and furry musk too. Over time I smell more of the musk, it’s similar to the musk in Black Bear Moon, but without the berries. It definitely smells furry though, a bit like the brown fuzzy musk in the Little Brown Cat. The labdanum’s sticky sweet scent seems to enhance the treacle-like undertone of the rum. The tonka’s a bit more prominent as well. Verdict: a winner! This is a cosy fuzzy scent that is perfect for the winter months. It’s also one of the few caramelised/rum-based scents that I can pull off. Backup? Maybe. But I think I prefer Berliner Dom Antics as my favourite Berlin-themed scent of the collection (that I've tried so far).
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The first Christmas market that we visited in Berlin was at Potsdamer Platz. We were completely wiped from the day of travel from Salzburg, but we were stubbornly determined to at least step into the market before collapsing into bed. The scent of brightly frosted lebkuchen, warm mutzenmandeln, and chocolate-drizzled, marzipan filled schneeballen. I don’t know how to adequately describe how much I love this. It’s a blast of chocolate similar to Gelt, but with a warm cheesecake-y dough-y cupcake-y spice added in. It doesn’t morph much from application to dry down; a slightly pretzel-nutty note is the only thing that fades. It’s incredibly comforting and delicious. I typically don’t wear a scent two days in a row (just because I have so many to choose from and I love variety) but I’ve worn this 3 days in a row now since it arrived. It’s that good! This will be a backup bottle buy for sure.
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Lilith meets the Gargoyles of Paris: stone and ancient incense, beeswax and lavender smoke. The stone and the incense are there. I'm not getting any beeswax so that's kinda disappointing. Honestly, I'm not a fan of the lavender smoke. It does indeed smell like smokey lavender and is off-putting. I was hoping for a more beeswax/incense heavy scent with the other notes in the background.
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Our trip to the Catacombs was bittersweet. Lilith was touched by the beauty and poignancy of the experience, but also horrified by the stories of people getting lost underground. Lilith surrounded by the ghosts of six million Parisians: damp black moss, grey sandalwood chips of bone, and winding sheets of balsam, ambergris, nagarmotha, and frankincense. This is a dark scent but not as heavy as I thought it would be. Also, somewhat perfumey? I wasn't expecting that. I'm mostly smelling balsam and sandalwood with a bit of animal funk from the ambergris. Some dark dampness around the edges. I'm also getting something that smells like old, musty linens. I love the Lab's balsam so I'm not complaining. It's a very nice that I can see myself wearing.
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Even the most intrepid adventurers get sleepy. Coffee, coffee, and more coffee for the grownups, and vanilla ice cream to en’sugar the kiddo out from her stupor. This is great! Exactly as you might expect based on the description: sweet coffee and a bit of musky vanilla. It's kind of like a less musky, more gentle, vanilla-accented Jialong (which I love too). It reminds a bit of the scent of the Campsite Coffee candle from Bath and Body Works that I have, only better.
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While we were at the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, I desperately wanted to see the Nefertiti bust and share the moment with Lilith. There’s a story behind why the bust is so important to me, but that’s for another time. Suffice to say, I was overwhelmed with awe and joy, and a kind docent told me that we could take a photograph from the doorway as long as we didn’t use flash. This blurry mess is my best attempt! Myrrh steeped with cardamom, cinnamon, and sweet wine, streaked with lines of labdanum kohl, and gilded with crushed ambrette seed, a copper oxide musk, and accords of lime spar and iron oxide. In the bottle I mostly get wine and, I guess, the lime spar because it has a mineral-like lime smell to it. Once it's on the skin it morphs quite a bit. The myrrh and spices come out while the wine note recedes and becomes a background note. This scent is kinda hard to describe. Myrrh is the base with the other notes sorta popping in and out. One moment I smell lime, another moment Wine, and another moment Labdanum. It's all in there spice, resins, mineral, stone, a bit of sweetness, musk, and metal. It sounds like a mess but it's not. These notes play really well together. I really love this scent but more than that it's intriguing. I have the feeling this will age beautifully.
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Salzburg is so goddamn beautiful. Chilled white tea, freesia, and bergamot blanketing skeletal branches. Winter wind brushing across still waters. Powdery floral with tea and bergamot. In the background of the scent is something aquatic-ish. Soft, feminine, and perfumey. Stays close to the skin. I can see wearing this in Spring or Summer. I like it well enough just not sure I would reach for it that often.
