I woke up on Tuesday morning sad that it was my last day in Paris, and unwilling to let a single moment of it go to waste. I got up and ready, had my usual breakfast at the café, and hopped on the metro heading for the Marché Raspail.

The food market on Raspail is supposedly the most expensive street food markets in Paris, and a favorite of the one and only Ina Garten. When planning my trip I knew I had to include this market on my list of things to do, as I had never bothered with going to a food market on either of my two previous trips. I wanted to see this.

And I was far from disappointed. There were the most fabulous fruits and vegetables I'd ever seen, fish, chickens (plucked, but with their claws still on, which weirded me out), cheese, seafood, jarred goods. I wanted to buy everything! And at that moment I wanted, more than anything, a tiny Parisian flat with a tiny Parisian kitchen to take a bag of fresh produce home to and dig in.

I strolled the market for a while, snapping lots of photos, and then headed out for some sightseeing on foot.

I strolled up to l'Église Saint-Sulpice on a whim, the same one made famous in Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code. It was so gorgeous. Much prettier than expected.

The area surrounding ended up also being a great shopping region, which is where I found a small Ladurée (where the invented macarons, I got a half dozen including rose petal and green apple, omg) and an Agatha store, where I continued to satisfy my jewelry obsession.

I walked on toward the center of Paris where my lunch-time plans waited.

I booked a cooking class with La Cuisine on a whim a few weeks before the trip, and it easily ended up being one of my favorite experiences during my trip. For a little over 2 hours we mingled and cooked, and then sipped wine and ate. Class had about 12 folks from around the US, except for a girl from Hong Kong who spoke better english than I do (I have to get Lily a foreign education, gees).

The menu included french onion soup, stuffed zucchini and tomatoes and madeleines. I can hardly think of three better French yummies to make. And the location was perfection. It was a small venue right on the Seine near l'île de la Cité. The "classroom" was a kitchen with a long counter that we worked around, with a perfect dining room setup with a view of the Seine. Per-fection.

After class I walked over for a quick sight-see of the Notre Dame Cathedral, where I got hit by an insane downpour (don't let those blue skies deceive you) which sent me immediately back to the hotel via metro to pour the water out of my boots.

After drying off and changing I headed out on foot again, but this time I headed northwest to the Sacré Cœur for a view of the city that I had fallen in love with all over again. When it started to get dark, I strolled down and hopped on the metro once more to the Eiffel Tower. I had to say goodbye.

It was the best way I could think of to spend my last night in Paris: sitting under the Eiffel Tower thinking about how the trip had exceeded my expectations. How I had exceeded my own expectations.

I met awesome people (I didn't even tell you about the motorcycle guy on one of my flights, the sweet lady at a jewelry store, or the friend I made at a bakery near my hotel), I had learned lots about Photoshop and met crazy-talented ladies at Blogshop, I had a "breakfast place" in Paris and made friends with it's owner. I traveled 5,000 miles from home all alone without throwing up from missing Cute Kid. I was on a business trip - a business that I own and run - in Paris.

Dude, I'm a grown up. (Well, except for the fact that I ate so many macarons that I gave myself a stomache, like a kid, and I totally overuse the word "dude.") What an odd thing to realize.