Savoring rum, cheese, & perfume on St. Martin/St. Maarten

[Tripatini]

There I was in my white lab coat, examining 40 vials and trying to determine which combinations to mix to get the best outcome. Admittedly, I wasn’t performing some important scientific discovery or creating a medical breakthrough, but it felt almost that significant. What if I screwed up, made ridiculous choices as to the most effective ingredients and came away with an awful smelling product. Yup, I was making perfume at the Tijon Parfumerie & Boutique on the French side of the Caribbean island of St. Martin. The other half, St. Maarten, is the Dutch side, and the two together form the smallest land mass in the whole world to be shared by two countries, France and the Netherlands.

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