Boys-R-Us: On Top of the World!

Finally, the moment you've all been waiting for (presuming there is anybody left who even cares about seeing all our pictures from from France anymore. But at least I am not inviting you all over to see a slide show. Thanks to modern technology I can bore you to tears in the comfort of your own home!)... pictures of the Eiffel Tower!

Now before my trip, all I could really think about France was the Eiffel Tower. I just couldn't wait to see it, to stand under it, and to go up it. I had all kinds of ideas about what that would be like, and I was rather excited about the prospect. So I was rather surprised that our trip was already half over before I ever got a peek at the Eiffel Tower. It's just that when we got to France we discovered that there is just so MUCH to this magical and fascinating and beautiful place, that we just got carried away with it all, and the need to see the Eiffel Tower got lost in all of the excitement.

After our very LONG day at Versailles, we were absolutely exhausted, and couldn't wait to get back to our comfy hotel, and rest our feet for our first trip into the city in the morning. But Versailles was just west of the city, and our hotel was just east of it, so instead of getting on the freeway that circumvents downtown, on a whim we decided, what the hay, lets just drive right through downtown, and maybe even catch a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower before calling it a night.

So we got off the freeway and suddenly we found ourselves driving along the Seine River. I knew that was a good place to be. In moments we looked up and saw this...

I was so excited I had to take a picture right through the windshield! There it really was, the Eiffel Tower, and it was SO CLOSE!

And there was the Mini-Me version of the Statue of Liberty, just like I recognized it from National Treasure 2.

Hi Lady Liberty...

...Bye Lady Liberty. Sorry, but I've got a tower beckoning me.

The Eiffel Tower seemed so close, but like a looming mountain, the closer you got, the further away you realized it was, and it seemed to take forever to get there. We are still quite a ways away at this point, as we still have to cross the bridge to get there.

I was SO ridiculously excited!

I took these out the window of the car. Luckily for me, there is a lot of traffic near the tower (for one thing it is downtown Paris, and thus traffic, and for another thing, one can't help but gawk at the tower. Even when we had seen it several times by the end of the trip, I still couldn't help but gawk at it!) The sun was just beginning to set, and the tower was glowing almost red in its light.

I LOVED IT!

So we decided to just drive around it before heading for the hotel, but as we drove around it we found plenty of parking right there at Champs de Mars, the park under the tower, and parking was free after 7pm. Suddenly our synapses was firing and we had forgotten all about how tired we were, so we decided to just park and make it an official visit!

What great timing, too! The sun was just setting right behind it and the clouds were positively glowing! The silhouette of the tower was stunning jutting into such a sky! I set up camera in my new tripod, plopped down into the grass, and took a picture every few minutes to catch it as the sky changed.

Here is a quick time-lapse movie I made of the lighting of the Eiffel Tower.

I also took out my travel watercolor journal, and I quickly painted a wash of the colorful sky as it graduated from blue to purple to pink to orange, and when it dried I painted a black tower right in front of it, remembering to stop every few minutes to snap another picture.

Then, as the sun went slowly down, the lights went slowly on!

It was so fun to sit there one the grass and just look up at the tower. We weren't the only ones. There were people everywhere doing the same thing. Many had cameras, and many of those cameras were on tripods. Some were just taking pictures with their mind, the kind you want to hold onto forever. But everyone was looking in the very same direction.

It really was amazing!

Then, suddenly, just when I thought I had gotten used to the sight of the huge lit tower piercing the sky, something amazing happened. The entire structure started sparkling! Thousands of tiny sparkles randomly all over the entire thing. It looked like the tower had been doused in glitter and spun around under a bright light. It was glorious and sent a thrill up my spine. Apparently, every hour on the hour the Eiffel Tower glitters like that, and it is quite the show! I took this picture of it, but because it was night, and the exposure was so long, it caught every sparkle at once, and didn't make for a great picture. The sparkling Eiffel tower is like a fantastic fireworks show. Pictures can never do it justice. This is one case where you really do HAVE to be there!

Suddenly nobody was a bit tired.

The light show was all the invitation we needed to go visit the tower in person.

Only by walking under it do you get a true sense of how enormous it is!

Yet as surprised as I was about how big it was, I was equally surprised at how beautiful it was. I was expecting a rugged over-sized erector set crane, not the graceful, feminine lines and pretty details. How could something look so substantial, and yet like delicate lace at the same time?

The bridge builder, Gustave Eiffel, built it in 1889 as the showpiece for Paris' World's Fair. At 1,000 feet, it was the tallest structure in the world at the time - taller than the Chrystler building. It was meant to have no purpose other that to be a showpiece, and was to be taken down when the fair was over. But people flocked from everywhere to see the tower, so they decided to leave it up. I'm so glad!!!

We couldn't wait another minute. We decided to go up. All the way UP! It was interesting to see the huge wheel and hydraulic system that took the huge elevators up the angled legs.

When we got out of the elevators on the middle level, I was amazed at the view and wanted to take some pictures, but Dennis refused to stop until we got to the top, so up the next elevator we went.

At the top it was VERY windy, much more so than at the middle, which I thought was pretty windy itself.

I tried taking pictures, but even with a tripod the lights kept coming out like little squiggles. Either the wind was shaking my camera, or the entire tower was moving so much that I couldn't get a good shot. I did get a few that were OK.

This is the Seine River and beyond it the Champs-Elysees, The Tuileries Gardens, and the Louvre.

This is the Hotel des Invalides, and beyond it the double bell towers of Notre Dame.

And of course, the Arc de Triomphe, with its avenues extending out from it like spokes on a wheel. Pretty fantastic!

Since this was our very first peek of the city, the view from the tower gave us a very good orientation on what was where in Paris, and made finding our way around much easier. Looking at the City of Lights from this perspective was so exciting, and made me want to jump into the adventure the is Paris with both feet - I couldn't wait until morning!

Oh, and it was SO romantic way up there on top of the world! There is no one I'd rather be up there with!

But as great as it was on top, It was equally exciting, and romantic, just to be under it.

My neck hurt from craning my neck to look up at it, and I had to put my camera in all kinds of crazy angels on the tripod to get some decent pictures of it. (Nobody seemed to pay any attention to the crazy blond lady almost laying on the ground in a mass busy people trying to look into her camera that was pointed straight up in a tripod. They probably see that sort of thing all the time, right?)

You don't even want to know what knots I had to tie myself in to get this shot. Any guesses what it is? It is looking straight up from directly beneath the tower. Looks like something from Star Wars doesn't it?

What a wonderful and unexpected way to end a long day, and a perfect way to start our visit to Paris!