This Long Weekend, Take a Trip With These Travel-Inspired Scents

Any hope for grand summer plans may be drifting away, but there is still one way to be transported to a sunny beach or bustling city.

Right now, aside from the occasional trip to the grocery store, the only travelling we’re really doing is from our couch to our kitchen to our bed. As the days turn into weeks and the weeks turn into months, it’s becoming clearer that we’re not going to be able to “escape” to a beautiful destination anytime soon. Any hope for grand summer plans may be drifting away, but there is still one way to be transported to a sunny beach or bustling city. Stock up on travel-inspired candles and essential oils that remind you of your favourite travel spots, or that evoke visions of places you’ve always wanted to visit. It may not be as good as the real thing, but it’s still a sensory escape of sorts, and that’s enough for now.

AromaTech
Vancouver-based scent company AromaTech has just launched a Cities Collection, a selection of diffuser blend aroma oils made with raw and natural ingredients, to evoke the energy associated with various cities around the world. 
The Vancouver aroma, for example, contains notes of juniper, pine, cedar, ocean water and sea salt in a nod to the coastal city’s lush forests; New York has notes of coffee, chocolate, Bailey’s, almond and sandalwood to reflect the city’s bustling coffee shops; while Tokyo has notes of yuzu, wasabi, cherry blossom, hinoki wood and green tea representing both the vibrancy of the city and the tranquility of its gardens.

Homesick
Homesick’s travel-inspired candles and diffusers were created to remind you of the place where you grew up. In addition to a large collection easily filtered by city, state or country, the American company also offers a range of candles inspired by childhood memories like road trips, summer camp and Friday night football. Its Country range includes Brazil, China, India, Australia and Canada, the latter inspired by “a cozy morning sipping a Double Double and indulging in a stack of pancakes drowned in maple syrup.”

Vancouver Candle Co.
This candle company offers two travel-inspired collections taking cues from various geographic locations across Canada. One is the Great White North collection, inspired by “vast landscapes of natural beauty” and offering scents like Prairies (wild rose, currant, sage), Great Lakes (sweet fern, blackberry, white oak) and West Coast (fir, spruce, oak moss). The other is the Neighbourhood collection: Rosedale and The Beaches in Toronto, Kitsilano and Gastown in Vancouver, Muskoka, Ont. and more.

Diptyque
This Parisian company’s limited edition City Candles range includes metropolises like Shanghai, Miami, Berlin, London and Beverly Hills, each candle in a colourful jar unique to the destination. While they’re typically available only in the cities that inspired their origin, they do drop online exclusively on Diptyqueparis.com in limited quantities from time to time, so keep your eyes peeled.

Brooklyn Candle Studio
This New York candle company’s Escapist Collection of scents is inspired by places the founders have visited that “have a permanent place in [their] olfactory memories.” Options include Santa Fe, which smells like “a night outdoors in the desert,” Tuileries, which hints at “an afternoon in the royal garden,” and Santorini, reminiscent of “an island orchard of ripe fig trees.”

And for more Canadian-made scented candles, check out our roundup here.