Paris

Said Goodbye to Tasha and James for the next three months. I will stay with them again when I return for a week in November. Was so great being able to spend so much time together. Found the Busabout departure hostel - for a full day's travel, all the buses leave the hostels at 8.00am. The bus was completely full. Uneventful trip to Dover and ferry across to Calias then back on the bus, where the whether immediately changed to very sunny and hot - at least 15C hotter than London. Gratefully, the coaches are all air-conditioned. Dozed off my hangover (had been out catching up with old friend from shool - Carolyn till late), arriving Paris just before 6.00pm. Mary, our guide on the coach, was brilliant. She was very positive about Paris, and gave us tons of tips on where to go and what to do, how to avoid the pick-pockets on the metro etc....

On the buses, we can book additional 'travel sectors' with the guide and they put them into their special hand-held computer and the bookings get uploaded straight away. I took advantage of this with Mary and booked all my sectors as far as Tangiers for the next two weeks, as it being the beginning of August, this is their busiest month. We can also book hostels for the same night on-board the coach, or through their website which is pretty useful if you haven't been that organised, (like me).

Even though I was completely whacked, I decided to do a bike tour of Paris that evening. Mary had highly recommended it, plus we got a good discount with her. "Mikes Bikes", run by Americans, was a pretty good outfit and you see loads of Paris with very little effort this way. Paris is quite flat, (apart from Montmarte and Sacre Cour - where my hostel was - loads of hills to climb with my backpack!). It is otherwise good for cycling. First, though, I had to get the meeting place at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower, by 7pm. The new shoes I had bought in London the day before gave me a blister and the bus took ages to get to the other side of Paris. Eventually arrived 20 minutes late, hobbling over to join the large group, which had just finished their introduction. About 30 other tourists doing the tour, so we became an attraction in ourselves (felt a bit like I was doing Tour de France!). We biked through the Latin Quarter, past Notre Dame (which had been cleaned since I last saw it and only the tower was still black), around the Louvre, down the Champs Elysee and ended up at sunset doing a boat cruise and drinking cheap wine. Pretty good evening!

Got lost again on the way home as (of course) the nearest metro station turned out to be closed), and didn't get to bed till 2.00am. Exhausted. They make the Eiffel Tower sparkle for ten minutes every hour in the evening - very pretty so hope my photos turn out.