MAY 18

Saturday,

Saturday, May 16. We left our house for the airport at 3pm for our 6 pm flight to Paris. It was nice to not have to get up early to leave. While we don’t always have a chose, I will definitely choose this time in the future if I can. We arrived in Paris at 1pm, Paris time with almost no sleep but that was to be expected for us. Just like in March in Hawaii, we arrived to storm warnings on our phone for rain and flooding. Luckily we had a driver met us at the airport (free with our hotel booking). It rained cats & dogs on the way into town with lots of standing water on the road. So lucky we weren’t doing the metro and having to find our hotel dragging our suitcases. We went out to get some food and then off to bed about 8 pm Paris time.

The next morning was Monday, May 18. We ate in hotel, nice buffet with oranges to make fresh squeezed orange Juice, lots of nice baked bread, cheeses, local yogurt, chocolate croissant for David and the usual European buffet food. I then took a nap before walked to the train station to find a metro station. It has been a while since we were on the Paris metro and it is even larger than we remembered but we figured out how to get near Norte Dame. We saw so many cool buildings and crossed the river on our way to stand in a long weaving live to get into the cathedral. We choose to go here to see it after the fire and rebuilding and the cleaning of all the centuries of normal grim. It was beautiful. We sat a the back and listened to the church service that was going on and then we joined the tourists to walk around and see the amazing stained glass windows, painting, statues and just the amazing windows.

We came out to the pouring rain that had just ended, lucky to have missed that. We ate at a restaurant across from river and then back on the metro to our hotel. A good amount to see and still giving time to recover from. The time change and not sleeping on the flight. So lucky we have seen Paris several times before as we are not in the same shape as the last times to run around and see so much in a day.