Hi everyone,

I have just returned from a camping trip around France which I took as a valuable opportunity to have a look at some French interior design and architecture… but obviously I was taking the opportunity to eat a lot of food as well because interior design and food are two of my favourite things.

I will start off with a fun one which is an ice cream shop in a cave in Brantome – a lovely town in the Dordogne region. As you can see, here is me in the shop carefully selecting an ice cream… I went for Smurf flavour, not really sure what Smurfs are supposed to taste like (no Smurfs were killed in the manufacturing of this ice cream).

On a serious note, I really liked that this space within the rock had been made use of and in quite a fun way. The way that the blue light is used in the seating area brings a fun, party, night club type feel to the shop. Additionally; it complements the natural rock which is very old with the lighting being very modern. The thing that I liked most is that it was very unusual and I would never expect to be able to find ice cream in a cave.

And here is me very happy with my ice cream (Smurfs taste good)… no relevance to interior design what so ever, but I wanted to show you my pretty ice cream and prove there are no actual Smurfs in there.

I have a quite a few other interiors to show you which I will post as individual posts over the next week or so. I wanted to start with something lighter and fun. I have mainly looked at hotel design, restaurant design, retail design and bar design, but there is some grand and interesting residential design in there somewhere as well.

Let me know in the comments what you think of using caves as interior design spaces?

And have you ever seen or visited an interesting interior?

It would be great to hear from you…