Some friends of mine were kind enough to let me stay in their apartment after my trip to Luxembourg since my bus to Paris left before metros started running. I ended up not getting a ton of sleep with the time change, but I had enough time to hide Easter eggs for the girls- it was my first time being the Easter bunny haha. I was so scared the whole time that they would wake up. I don't know how my parents do it year after year. I made it to the bus and fell asleep... Until we got to the Paris area, and the police checked our papers. No dogs this time, so that was nice, and no one was taken off. Glad I brought my passport though to travel three hours within my own country. There were a few policemen just standing periodically on the side of the highway with huge guns. I wasn't sure of the strategy behind that one. Finally made it to Paris, and helped a nice Indian man to the metro. I got to my friend Olivia's Airbnb (Olivia studies in Birmingham for the semester, and she and her two friends are just starting their three week vacation). Her friends were super nice, although tired haha they had an interesting ride here, but we headed off to Easter Mass at Notre Dame. Usually if you want to go to Mass, you just slip in a side entrance instead of waiting in the tourist line, but this time they had blocked off the entire square, and we had to first wait in a huge line for a bag check and pat down. Then once we got into the square, the Mass line and the tourist line had been combined, so we had to wait in an even longer line to get into the church. Holy cow. Luckily it was sunny. The whole process took about 50 minutes. Normally I walk up and go right in. Man it was crazy. We finally got in, and having missed the Mass we were aiming for, we just walked around the church waiting for the next one. We times it just right to walk into our Mass, and Olivia was boss and grabbed three seats less than 10 rows up. We were also sitting behind a very adorable family so that was a bonus. The Mass was nice, but I forget that it's probably very boring for those who don't speak French. But Olivia and friends were great sports, and I think being there was pretty cool in itself. We finished Mass and looked around for a friend who left early, but after a while we gave up and went home, hoping she had done the same. We got back to the apartment and she wasn't there, so we were freaking out but then we got messages that she was on her way. So we hung out and cooked an Easter brunch and she came just in time :) we were all able to cram in and eat a big meal- crepes, fruit salad, sausage, eggs, and mimosas. Yum yum yum. I ate out of a pot haha but I got a wine glass... It was funny, we really enjoyed ourselves. After that we all made our way over to Montmartre. We burned many calories which I needed and I was happy it was a nice day. We climbed up to Sacre Coeur, took some pictures and walked around the church. It was really beautiful. Then we walked around the neighborhood a bit and looked at some stores, then headed down to Moulin Rouge. At this point it was time for me to head out, but we all got to take the metro together to our connecting trains. It was so so great to see Olivia and meet her friends, we had a really fun Easter together :)