After a breakfast of fruit, cereal, eggs n potatos this morning, we piled into the coach to go back to Paris. We were first taken to the Chateau and the Garden of Versailles. The Chateau is huge! It took Kin Louis XIII 50 years to build. The place was great, the only problem is that all the rooms were connected by a door at the end of each side. I don’t know if it was originally built this way or not but to get to any rooms you had to go through all the previous rooms, like one long hallway. After a while all the rooms started to look the same.

At the pick up time three of the guys almost missed the coach because they were late. We learned that the coach doesn’t wait for anyone, you either be at the coach on time or you find your own way back, good thing I brought a $6 watch from Wal-Mart. After the Chateau we were dropped off at the Concorde for the rest of the afternoon.

We made our way to the Notre Dame for some pictures and to see inside the great cathedral. Like everything else so far, it’s huge. I kept thinking of the Disney movie, the Hunchback of Notre Dame… I wonder where the bell tower is… The stain glass windows inside are beautiful. There are a few really really big ones. I snapped a dozen or so pictures of the windows and archs before leaving.

We then had lunch at a café nearby. Lunch was extremely expensive, the club sandwich (ham and boiled egg on a baguette) I had was €7.80, and the chocolate crape I shared, €6.50. The cost of Evian water was €4.50 for a regular bottle and €5.00 for coffee. Man, how do people survive! I hope it’s this high just b/c it’s a tourist spot…My lunch was a good €13 without drinks… there goes my €5/day lunch budget for the trip…

After lunch we slowly made our way back to the bus, checking out postcards and posters along the way. I bought a few, but now I have to figure out a way to keep them from getting smushed… the posters don’t come with a poster container, they don’t sell it either. Gosh, if I set up a stand here selling only poster containers, I’d make a fortune!

The coach took us back to get refreshed for an hour or so. Afterwards we went back to Paris for dinner and cabaret. Diem, Ester and I didn’t go to the dinner because it was optional and we opted to go and wander the city and find dinner ourselves. We walked around looking at old postcards and letters dating back one hundred years ago. Esther loved the postcards and got a few for herself. I was a bit wary of it, postcards written by people long dead seems pretty scary to me. We also stopped to check out some antiques that people were selling in the little alleys. We found dinner at a pizza shop and met back with the group to watch the cabaret show.

The show, called la Nouvelle was pretty good, not as good as some vegas shows but it was a good experience. We each got half a bottle of champagne but most of us didn’t finished more than 2 glasses. By the time we were done it was midnight. After we got back, we grabbed a beer and then got ready for bed.