Bioderma Hydrabio Tonique Lotion Hydratante for Sensitive Dehydrated Skin is a win for me.

When beauty enthusiasts hear of Bioderma, the first thing they'd think of is the much renowned, very frequently mentioned Crealine TS H2O Micellaire or cleansing water. During my last trip to Paris, that was exactly the first item on my shopping list. However, while shopping in their pharmacie at the popular Champs-Elysées, this beautiful clear blue bottle truly caught my attention. I've never heard of this product when I was doing my research on French drugstore beauty items to buy yet I was drawn to the clean packaging. Of course, it coming from Bioderma is a bonus because I was confident that it would be a product of quality, or so I had hoped.

We had a field time shopping in the pharmacie and since I had budgeted for loads of foreign beauty products to bring home (almost half was for the customary year-end gift exchange with lovely friends), I happily put this in my basket without giving a second thought.

Travel Tips for a non-seasoned traveller: Paris

It's only been my second time to Paris in my whole 20 years of my lifetime (definitely kidding on the number of years). But since I went there last year with my family for a much shorter duration compared to this year's 2-week epic vacation with my lovely girlfriends, I could make a good comparison of what you should expect or what you can include in planning for that vacation in Paris. I've promised my girlfriends that I would do this post because there were things we planned that weren't followed through to a T for the lack of information on the net. And that was my main source of our info - the net.

And this is a long post.

When to go to Paris?

Paris is a lovely city. A city is a city, right? But I love Paris for that "air" of chic-ness. It's probably a hyped-up one, but a well-branded hype.

We were planning on making the trip end of summer but due to our work and personal commitments, we unfortunately had to agree on early winter. Rather than push the plan aside as we did the previous years, this time we decided this is it. Go at all cost even if we didn't have a full group. 

A 2-week vacation in Paris & Zurich with my girlfriends.

I was away for an excellent 2-week holiday with wonderful girlfriends and since I was leaving my children and husband on their own, I was busy with the preparation 2 weeks before the trip, cooking all the necessary lunch and dinner for the family and made them into frozen 2 weeks stock, preparing checklists of chores and meals, etc. so that when it was time to leave, I left with a clear conscience :)

It was a good break for me especially since the four of us have been planning this for more than 5-6 years.. one of the girls has since then called Switzerland her home and we've all put off the plans due to the many commitments that arose since the last 6 years. I'm so glad that we finally managed to put things aside and made it a point to finally do it.