I went on holiday to Nice in France, and my friend found a leaflet for a sweet factory tour in our hotel lobby. From reading this blog, even though we’re only about six posts in, hopefully you’ve gathered that I have a bit of a sweet tooth. So obviously I had to go!
The company is called Confiserie Florian and they have been around, making sweets and chocolate, since 1921.
In the leaflet the company says: “The Confiserie Florian candy factories, two of the most captivating sights on the French Riviera, carry on candy-making traditions by turning the region’s fruits and flowers into delicious confections.”
It seems like the company have two locations, one in Nice and one in Gorges du Loup, and offer guided tours in both. In fact, they really big up the Gorges du Loup location a lot more in the leaflet but I wasn’t in Gorges du Loup so I had to go with what I could.
Between July and August the Nice shop does guided tours between 9am – 12.30pm and between 2pm and 7pm.
Here is what I packed in my back pack for my day trip:
- Money
- Nivea Factor 50 sun lotion
- Cold water in a can by Aix that you can spray at your face when you’re hot (would recommend)
- A hairbrush
- A snack (waffle)
- Piriteze allergy tablets
- Money
- Headphones
I also took a book and a bottle of water but they wouldn’t fit in the picture. Oh and my phone but I used that to take the picture. Am I a travel blogger now?
The tour itself isn’t really a guided tour, as you just wander around the factory. Some of the sections are behind glass and one of them is open so you can speak to the person making the sweets.
The smell when we walked in was amazing although I’m not really sure what it was. The man making sweets was boiling up the sugar and had added a red colouring to it, before he poured it onto a stainless steel surface and kept folding it to cool it down. Then he added another flavour, again not sure what that was but I think it might have been strawberry, and a second aroma wafted through the workshop.
He was talking everyone through the process but I can’t really understand French so there was a fair bit of guessing on my part.
When the sugar mixture started to come together and get a bit more solid he ran it through a machine to shape the sweets before breaking them up and putting them in basically a cement mixer which coated them in sugar.
Then we got to the gift shop! There was an array of jam, chocolate, fruit sweets, crystallised fruit and crystallised flowers… it was like Willy Wonka’s factory but without the chocolate lake. And the Oompa Loompas (sadly).
I bought some caramels, an orange slice dipped in chocolate and some dark chocolate with rose petal crystals which was really delicious. I wanted to bring more chocolate home but I think it would have melted in my suitcase and that’s not ideal, so my friend and I just bought the one bar to eat on holiday.
Good news if you’re planning to go: there were tasting samples for lots of the treats in the shop. We made the most of those.
If you’re in Nice near the port and you have an hour to spare, I’d definitely recommend giving this one a go. The shop is great for gifts, though it is a bit pricey so be prepared to pay for the fact that it’s all handmade and local. It’s a really interesting insight into traditional sweet making techniques, though.
To end the day I went on a road train tour of Nice. Choo choo!
Notes to self after this experience:
- Learn French
Top tip: if you need a toilet in Nice, pay 0.50€ and use the ones in the Albert 1st Gardens on the Promenade des Anglais. They are spotless! #travelblogger
Bonus picture: we got ice creams that had a macaron in the middle. What a time to be alive!
