Day 14 Paris Friday June 6 2008

Well this is the last day of the tour and it was a mixed day, some of the tour had already left this morning (an english couple from Perth WA) but the majority of us went on the morning tour with a local guide which was quite frankly crap.

Both her and the driver gave us the worst tour of Paris with barely any chances to take photographs. We would have been better ditching them and taking one of the open top double decker buses.

At Notre Dame cathedral we spent 25 minutes hanging around a souvenir shop and wandering where our guide had gone ... which meant we had less than 5 minutes at the Eiffel tower and we didnt walk underneath as we all thought we were supposed to do.

Alison and I got done by the dodgy bloke coming towards us and pointing at a ring on the ground trick picking it up and coming towards us ... Mark had warned us about this and as Alison had her purse open I moved in front of her and told the guy to piss off & for alison to stay behind me ... he scarpered pretty quickly ... unbelievable!

a few of us had also stopped a potential pickpocket attempt in Notre Dame by two guys who pretended to be listening to our guide as they moved toward Vincent (the oldest guy on the tour) irony was he never has anything of value on him! I spotted this guy and I just kept staring at him ... Damien and Nick spotted him too and moved around him and between his mate ... when they realised we had made them ... they quickly moved off ... but they were hanging around the exit of the church ... again I walked straight at them with Damien and Nick staring at them and stayed between them and our group ... they got the message and moved away.

The optional trip I did was to Versaille palace and that was just totally mindblowing how big the place was and how opulent it was... the gardens were something else too. Yet again more north african parasites hanging around pestering tourists ... they are everywhere in Paris and really annoying ...

This evening we had the farewell dinner. Mark took us up into Montmatre which is the heart of bohemian paris up in hills overlooking the city. We saw the sacre-couer church and soaked up the atmosphere and had Crepes ... I went to a shop by myself and used french to order and got myself into all sorts of strife as I missed a part of the reply and the shop assistant thought i was paying for the crepe being cooked which was for a girl waiting ... anyway, it meant that once the dust had settled, I had a 10 minute chat up with a cute french girl ... before I realised I was late for meeting up with the rest of the group!

Dinner was with frog legs, snails and other great french food and lots of wine and beer. Farewells were said and Nick kept his promise and did a hakka on the streets of paris, not once but twice and everyone was impressed, including the locals and the american tourists who videoed it.

After we got back to the hotel, nick and i went up the street to find a little bar and had a few more beers and a chat before we staggered back and went to bed.

I will have to come back to Paris, so much more to see and do here. Looks like I will have to keep an original promise to a friend in regards to this.