July 18th

Today was our last day in Paris. Paris has been suprisingly fun, I'm so glad that I was able to be hear for the week, I've seen some really neat and amazing things and I'll never forget my experiences that I've had here. Today we had the first half of the day free so we wanted to go see the Opera House and shop a little before we went to Fontainebleau and the Vaux Le Vicomte. The Opera House was way cool, I wish we could have spent more time there but I'm just glad that we were able to go. It totally reminded me of the Phantom of the Opera. We heard that there was good shopping by the Sacre-Coeur so we took the metro, while on the metro there was a man playing a guitar and harmonica. It was pretty cool, its been amazing to see what people will do for money. Anyways, we went shopping and it was fun they had a bunch of stores with really pretty jewlry and scarves. On our way out of one of the shops we were accosted by these men from Aferica wanting to make us braclets on our arm. Its just like one of those friendship braclets that you learn how to do in 4th grade, anyways, they were pretty agressive and insisted that they make one for me even though I kept telling them that I didn't have any money but he did it anyways. So me and my friends are all getting a braclet wondering how we are going to get out of this. The man that did mine was very nice, he's a smooth talker alright, but i'm grateful for the cool experience. By the time we were done it was time to go meet at the hotel for our next adventure. We took an hour bus ride to Fontainebleau where we were able to have an audio guided tour. Fontainebleau was like a get-away palace for the Kings, where they could go hunting. It was really pretty inside and greatly influenced by the Italians. After Fontainbleau we were able to go to the grocery store and get some food to pack dinner for our candle light tour of Vaux Le Vicomte. We rode the bus about another 30 minutes out to Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte. When we got there we found a nice pavilian with picnic tables and ate our dinner that we had packed, after eating we headed over to the Vaux and had our really cool tour by candle light. It was really neat, it really was litteraly by candle light, it was a little creepy at first but the way they set it up was really neat, you could even go out to the gardens at night too, but enfortunately it was raining so it was pretty cold. We got back on the bus around 11 30 so we didn't get into our hotel until about 1am! Crazy, it was so fun though. I will miss Paris but I'm so excited for London! I love the UK, at least I hope I do!