Day out in Paris

I got my first day out without kids in ages on Thursday. I went to Paris, where I planned to sell some of my books, buy some others, and have lunch with some friends (former coworkers).

I took metro line 14 to meet my friends. This is the newest line in Paris. It's a fully automated metro, with no driver.


The bookstore thing didn't quite go as planned, since they refused to buy about 3/4 of the books I had brought, and when I went to buy some new (used) ones, they had hiked their prices up so ridiculously that the cheapest used book I could find was 3,80 € (about $5), and most were over 7 € ($9.25). USED books!! Absurd. I did buy 4, but nothing like the bagsful I used to come out of there with when they had 2 or 3 € books.

I did have a nice lunch with my friends, though. Two of them work here at Place Vendôme now, where I could be working today if I had stayed with the law firm:

In case Place Vendôme doesn't mean anything to you, here's another illustration of the kind of area they are located in now. I only thought the law firm was in a fancy location when it was in the 16th district.

One of my friends was coming home with me for the weekend, and we stopped by Starbucks for a bit on our way to the train station. Then we took the metro over to Gare de l'Est and walked to Gare du Nord, where we hopped on a TER (regional train) back to Villers-Cotterêts.

I ended up with a migraine from the heat and pollution of the city, so I'm not planning any other excursions to Paris in the very near future.