Elizabeth in Town

This week I had a visitor from home: Elizabeth Medlin, my friend from UCC in Fort Worth who also goes to UT with me. She was coming over the pond to interview with several graduate schools in England and she'd never been to Paris before.

She got into town Monday morning and I met her at the train station Chatelet Les Halles right by my apartment, the exact same routine as I'd done with Bob and Deb a few weeks prior. Her flight was delayed, so pretty much as soon as I'd gotten her I had to run to school for class and leave her at my apartment to take a nap. I had a finance midterm this week, so I knew that I wasn't going to be the best tour guide, but after class the two of us walked around the south bank and saw some of the touristy sites that I'd been holding off on seeing (namely, the Eiffel Tower). It was only the second real time that I'd set out and explored the city I actually live in. We walked around the area around the Eiffel Tower, including the Ecole Militaire and Les Invalides (though the building itself was closed so we couldn't see Napoleon's tomb inside), and then got crepes and walked the Seine back East. We crossed over and went through La Place de la Concorde, with Paris' pilfered Egyptian obelisk, the Tuileries Gardens and then through the Louvre to end up back near my apartment. Cameron and I cooked dinner for the four of us and we had a big feast of teriyaki chicken, pasta, and a bunch of sauteed vegetables.

The next day, since I had class nearly the whole time, Elizabeth went out on her own and explored other parts of the city like Montmartre and the Sacre Coeur Cathedral. Pretty tame night as the four of us ended the night watching Aliens.