I had a pretty chilled day Monday. With all of this moving around, and walking (oh the kilometers I´ve walked!) I felt like I needed a cruisey day to recoup and recharge the batteries. So my day involved editing photos, writing blogs, and watching Scrubs and Gossip Girl. My night, however, was far more exciting!...

While sitting in the stairwell of my hostel hacking into next door´s internet, I met some lovely guys from Chicago who had been studying in Madrid, and were now doing a bit of travelling before heading back to the states. While teaching them how to hack into the network (again feeling chuffed with my technological skills), they invited me to Sacré Coeur (a beautiful nineteenth century temple on the top of a hill in Montmarte) that evening to watch the sunset. Sounded perfect, so we made plans to meet up later on.

In the meantime, again in the hacking stairwell, a young Mexican girl named Andrea introduced herself to me in French. Apparently, when I had been talking to Mum on Skype earlier, she didn´t think I was speaking English (HA!) and thought I was Parisian. HOW COOL! I invited her along to that evening´s activities also.

We all caught the metro to Montmarte (there were eight of us in total) and stopped at a supermarket to buy some wine (1.50 Euro Bordeaux), pretzels, cheese and olives before heading up the hill to witness the Parisian skyline at sunset.

It was unbelievable fun! We drank too much wine, listened to live music, watched fire twirlers, made new friends, and (finally) at 9:30pm we saw a Paris sunset. The view was fantastic, and I have heaps of photos for you all to see what I mean.

On the way home we stopped to buy crepes - my very first Parisian crepe! The boys were nice enough to shout me, and I had mine with lemon and sugar. YUM! When I got home (12:30pm), two more people had arrived in my room (chicks from Dublin, Ireland), so still giddy with excitement (and wine) I attempted to have a shower and organise myself without waking them all up - unsuccessful (whoops!).

The next morning Andrea and I headed out to explore, as it was my last day in Paris. First up, headed to Cimetriere du Pere Lachaise, a beautiful old cemetery that is resting place to Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison (The Doors), Chopin, and others. French cemeteries are so ornate and grand, with the majority of people having their own tomb (some as big as houses!). It was so nice just to wander around and chat, checking the tombstones to see if it was anyone we were familiar with. Oscar Wilde´s tomb was amazing, it had lipstick kisses all over it, and messages in Spanish, French and Italian. Oooh la la!

Next, we headed to La Cité, which is where Paris all began - it´s the original site of the Roman garrison and later of the palace of the Merovingian kings and counts of Paris, who in 987 became Kings of France. We had an awesome lunch of felafel baguettes (they even try to make Asian food French!) and French fries (4.5 Euros), and then headed over the Notré Dame cathedral. Did you know that they clean these old (OLD) buildings with giant laser beams? It´s true - the black soot burns at a lower temperature than the stone, so it just falls away.

Next up was Luxembourg Gardens (or Jardin du Luxembourg, if you´re French like me!). SO BEAUTIFUL! They are public gardens that were built by Henri IV´s widow to remind her of her hometown Florence, Italy - if this is what Florence is like, book me a ticket! We spent a couple of hours just wandering around taking it all in - children sailing boats on the pond, people having picnics, children taking donkey rides, giant gold heads (I hear you say ´Whaa?!' - check out the photos), etc.

We headed home to recoup before heading out on the much anticipated (drumroll) Fat Tyre Bikes Night Tour! When we (Andrea, three boys from Chicago and me) arrived, we were met by our tour leader, Andrew AKA Peaches. His first rule when riding with Fat Tyre tours? DOMINATE! You see at bus wanting to merge into your lane? DOMINATE! Taxi on your tail? DOMINATE! Granny at the pedestrian crossing? DOMINATE! With this in mind, we headed out, riding on the right hand side of the road (it´s so off-putting!!!). We took in many of the Parisian sights, and stopped for some awesome ice cream from a parlor that makes it´s own flavours on the island of La Cité, and has been doing so for hundreds of years (I had pistachio - a move which was considered bold by Peaches). Once it got dark, we boarded a boat to go for an hour long cruise on the Seine river, accompanied with free wine (of course). I actually offered to carry one of the bottles in my backpack during the tour, so lucky us, we started earlier than the rest of the tour! Paris really is beautiful at night. Every hour the Eiffel tour lights up like a giant sparkler, and at the moment it´s glowing a beautiful blue colour (not the traditional gold). Peaches pointed out an impressive building to our left - it´s the building that houses ´The Immortals´. The Immortals are the 40 top academics in France, and their sole purpose in life is to create French words to replace English ones (the French really do hate everyone). Apparently the only two English words they haven´t successfully replaced are computer and hot dog.

By 12pm, it was definitely time for bed. I said goodbye to my new friends, and headed up the 10 flights of stairs for the last time before I left Paris (phew!). Again, I tried not to wake my roomates, and again, I didn´t succeed (whoops again!)

So that´s it for Paris! Next time I´m there I really hope to go to the Moulin Rouge. Andrea is going to be studying in Paris for the next 6 months, so we have plans to go together before I head home.

Talk to you soon!

Love Hayley xxx