April 13th, 2014

By this morning I was desperate for laundry so I woke up at 7 and walked down the street to do laundry, took a shower while they were washing, met a guy from New York who just moved here for work, and got dressed up nice to go out to breakfast with Franny’s parents and their friends, all before Franny woke up.

We had to meet her parents at 10 in order to meet their friends by 10:30 so we could take the metro to the restaurant for breakfast. I really didn’t know much about this restaurant only that it was some place not well known to tourists and it was a really cool place to go. So Franny and I arrived at the hotel at 10 only to find that they were still asleep! They had received an email that the reservation was at 11:30 instead of 11 so they thought they could sleep a little while longer but they over slept. So we waited in lobby until they were ready to go and their friends met us in the lobby at 11.

Before heading to the metro, we stopped at their apartment just to see it. They were one building over from the hotel and we had to walk past it anyways to get to the metro station. The elevator was only big enough for 4 people! Her apartment was gorgeous, a lot bigger than I expected considering it’s only two blocks from the Eiffel Tower. After seeing her apartment, we caught metro up town to a cool jazz club with a buffet style breakfast; fantastic food and live jazz music in a very indie restaurant, with a very Parisian style look to the place.

We left there around 1:30, and took metro to the Louvre, because you can’t be in Paris for a few days without seeing the Louvre! Franny and I even got in for free because we were students in the EU! We visited Napoleon’s apartments then walked to the other side and saw Mona Lisa.

It was about this time that my knee started really acting up. It was extremely painful to bend and it slowed me down a bit but Franny’s dad’s an orthopedic surgeon and didn’t think there’s anything seriously wrong with it, just overuse.

After the Louvre, Franny’s parents went back to hotel while Franny and I walked to Notre Dame. It was one of the places I had to see here in Paris. On the way we saw the love bridge. I don’t believe there’s anything special about the bridge itself, except that there are thousands and thousands of locks on it, left by couples over the years as a symbol of their love to each other. You take a padlock, write both your names on it, lock it to the bridge and throw the key into the river. It was incredible to see. People do that all over Europe here (even on bridges in Liege) but you couldn't see through this bridge because of all the locks! 

Notre Dame was beautiful, just like I’d always pictured it! The line-up for the tour was way too long (plus my knee was really hurting) so we took some photos then headed to the nearest metro station, stopping to buy a souvenir Eiffel Tower on the way.

We met her parents and their friends again at the hotel and walked over to a small French café for supper. I had a meat platter which wasn’t as tasty as I thought it would be but the meat-load part of it was good. For dessert I had grapefruit ice cream! Yum!

Back at her parents hotel, Franny checked into her Ryanair flights for tomorrow morning and her parents arranged for a Shuttle to pick us all up and take us to the airport, which was 2 hours away because Ryanair only flies out of Paris-Bauvais airport (it really can’t even be called Paris since it’s two hours outside of the city but we didn’t know that when we booked. Since we had an 8 am flight, we had to be picked up by the shuttle at 5 am the next morning! So Franny and I called it an early night and we walked back to the hostel to pack so we could sleep as much as we could.