Day Trip to Paris

I only have 1 class on Tuesdays (French at 6:30 PM), so Tuesday is perfect for a day trip.  My mom's good friend, Barbara, was in Paris with her niece, Catherine, a few weeks ago and I decided to visit them.  I reserved an early TGV (high-speed train) and arrived in Paris around 9 AM on September 14th.  Then, I had to buy a metro ticket to get to their hotel.  The metro system is really easy to figure out because it's set up with color-coded lines:

Paris Metro Map

I made it to the hotel around 10 AM and met up with Barbara in the lobby.  We chatted for a few minutes while waiting for Catherine, but eventually went up to their room to see if she was ready.  After everyone was ready to go, we grabbed breakfast at the McDonald's down the street and jumped on the metro again.  We got off at the Notre Dame stop and spent 20-30 minutes getting lost before I whipped out my guide book (DK Eyewitness Travel: France) and navigated us to the cathedral.  We didn't go inside, but I got lots of pictures of the outside.  By the time we had walked around the whole thing, it was lunchtime and we headed back to the hotel.  Barbara went to the grocery store to pick up some food while Catherine and I visited the nearby Louvre gardens.  I took some more pictures of the entrance to The Louvre and the surrounding areas. We made it back to the hotel and had a delicious lunch of cheese, baguette, veggies from a vegetable platter, hummus, and a few plums.  My train back to Metz was at 2 PM, so I said goodbye and thank you after lunch, got back on the metro (where some creepy old Frenchman got a little too close to me), and just barely made my train back to school.  I'm excited that I finally got to meet Barbara (my Mom talks about her a lot) and I look forward to seeing her again in the States!  I'm also excited to go back to Paris for a weekend to see the rest of the sights!

Here's a picture for my Mom:

Me, Catherine, and Barbara in their Paris hotel

Click here for pictures from this trip.

-JChamp