We made it!

This has been a really, really, long week. It's only Thursday (I think?)

When I last wrote, I was sitting in a hotel just outside of the airport. Here's just a little bit about actually getting here.

We stopped for breakfast at a place called Eggs N'at, which was just a really great diner. It was perfect.

We headed to the airport around 2:30pm and hung around for about 5 hours waiting to board the plane. It was pretty boring.

And we finally boarded around 7pm. After all the waiting at the airport and hotel, I was not nearly as excited to get on the plane again for an additional 7 hours, even knowing that Paris was waiting on the other side. I kinda felt sad, too.

We boarded an took off with no problems. Actually I ended up switching with someone so a family could sit together, so I ended up in a row by myself, with the other nine members of our group together in the back of the plane. The couple sitting next to me were really nice, headed on a two week vacation to Italy. It turned out they had already been to Paris multiple times, and had some restaurant and activity recommendations for me.

The best days to fly are the cloudy and rainy ones, if you don't gee anxious very easily on flights. 

That's because after rainy windows and thick gray clouds you push through to this perfectly pristine, crystal clear blue sky over a blanket of clouds. It feels triumphant, like a good omen for the start of a trip.

The airplane food was, surprisingly, not terrible

This picture's pretty terrible, but here's what I saw: A clear, inky sky with the big dipper squarely facing me, wispy clouds that obscured the ocean, and far towards the horizon, a shimmering green veil.

First sunrise in France

Groggy and tired, we grabbed our luggage.

In the terminal, right after we grabbed out luggage

We were driven to the hotel, here's my room:

Cute, huh? Guess who took the bed with the canopy at my room mate's expense

View from my window

To try and avoid falling asleep before noon, we took a walk to Notre Dame, which is about a mile away from our hotel.

I'll be coming back to look at the inside soon!

 I've done a whole lot more in the past three days than I did all summer, so I'll be updating on that soon. Unfortunately, I've got an essay to finish first.

Bonsoir,

Rachel

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