Tour Eiffel

Nothing really says you’re in Paris like a view of the Eiffel Tower. It appears in your sights all over the city — I took a lot of pictures with it popping up in various places throughout the city. But your first view should be, well, spectacular. So, we waited until the first evening we were there (after hubby took a brief nap, in fact) and then took the Metro over to the Trocadero. That way you come up on the tower from around the side of the large exhibit buildings and suddenly there it is, all magnificent. Especially in the last light of the day, in that full on Paris evening blue sky.

It’s tough to take any shot of the Eiffel Tower that hasn’t been taken before. It is such a classic image. But still fun to see what you actually capture of it. We decided not to go up the tower — crowds were large and lines were long and we were very tired after a long travel day and sightseeing already. So we just walked around and enjoyed the views and the crowds, more observing the tourists than being one. I have an aversion to doing touristy things anyway, and the hawkers of small junk were particularly obnoxious here, shoving their wares in your face, which greatly annoyed me. So we got out of the immediate tower area pretty quickly, walking on down the Champ de Mars and enjoying the crowds. It seemed a lot of the younger crowd was hanging out here, drinking and playing soccer and waiting for the tower to go into “glitter mode”, as we called it, where twinkling lights on the Tower send everyone into seizures for the first five minutes at the top of every hour at night, which set everyone to cheering and singing. They were a happy crowd.

After that, we stumbled on through the streets to find a metro stop to take us back to the hotel and crash for the night.