July 25th- The Eiffel Tower

We’ve had a couple of days that have really been marathons for us, and we were all feeling it. We got up and around slowly this morning. The clock on the TV said it was 8:00. Not bad. We can get to the Eiffel Tower relatively early, still, and avoid most of the lines. As we were about to head out the door, Julie looked at her watch. It said it was 10:00. The clock on the TV was two hours slow. Well, we really needed the extra sleep, so we weren’t complaining too much.

We did have to reassess our plans for the day. We had brunch at McDonald’s instead of breakfast, but that included McCrêpes for the girls. (They’re French, right?) Instead of taking the trains into the city and probably having to make two different transfers, we decided to drive. It’s Saturday, and we didn’t have major problems getting in or parking. We parked along the Seine, downriver from the Eiffel Tower, right next to the model of the Statue of Liberty that the French kept when they gave the United States the big one for a birthday present.

We could admire the Eiffel Tower from where we parked and had no trouble walking to it. There were any number of people trying to sell trinkets of the Eiffel Tower as we walked. They all seemed to have the same ring of two or three sizes of replicas. Apparently, they’re not allowed to sell things this way, because we later saw a whole bunch of them run away at the same time when they apparently saw the authorities approaching.

Once we got to the Eiffel Tower there was an enormous number of people waiting in the space between it’s legs. Lines had formed and were winding around and around but they were these enormous serpentine masses that had formed on their own instead of having any direction. Scott and the girls got a place at the end of a line, and then Julie went off to find out where it actually went to. After weaving in and out and around, she confirmed that it did indeed go to the ticket booth and the entrance, so we staked out our claim in the queue. It took us close to two hours to move to the tickets and the elevators. The girls had some cotton candy while we waited.

The tower itself is a curious mix of grace and strength, beauty and industry. From far away, it’s unmistakable world-renowned silhouette is thing of beauty. You recognize its iconic importance immediately, and as you approach it and it grows in size to tower above you, your excitement mounts. However, you can see how the Paris residents may have objected to it originally. It is a product of the industrial age showing the wonders of progress by leaving its skeleton open to be viewed. The rivets and girders that can appear graceful at a distance can seem cold, hard and brown when viewed up close. Still, even when waiting in the long slow lines, you look up every once in a while and your eyes follow the curve of the legs up as far as you can see, and you’re impressed.

Once in the tower itself, we went up to what they call the 2nd floor. We didn’t read our Rick Steves enough to realize that there were exhibits on the 1st floor too, and like many other visitors we passed over that. The second floor is about 400 feet up, and offers some nice views of the city. We could pick out the Arc de Triumph, Notre Dame, the Louvre, and the Sacrê-Coure without any coaching. The three girls were happy to wait there, but Scott paid the extra money (and waited in the extra lines) to go up even further, to the “Summet”, the highest floor at about 900 feet. The views were not so much better there, but he was glad that he did it anyway. The elevator passed some workmen, attached with ropes, who were working on maintenance to the higher parts of the tower.

The Eiffel Tower sapped most of our afternoon and all of our energy. We crossed the Seine at the Trocadèro and walked through what looks like a ritzy neighborhood down the avenue named after John F. Kennedy. Not only did the apartments look rich, but there were nice looking houseboats moored along the embankment there. We got to the car and drove back out of Paris.

We seem to be staying in a part of the Paris suburbs that is populated by many blacks and minorities. Non- “French” people, anyway. We visited the very busy mall that we had seen near our hotel. It was harder to park there than it was in Paris. We ate at a pizza place in the mall, and did some shopping. Anna and Emma each got a new outfit and Julie got some sweatpants. We told her she just wanted to tell everyone that she was wearing fashions from Paris. Most importantly, we bought a big duffle bag to help us haul the stuff home that we’ve accumulated. We had hoped to send it home in several shipments, but finding post offices didn’t fit well into our schedules.

Hey, our hotel room is small. (How small is it?) It’s so small, that even the mice are hunchbacked. It’s so small that we have to go outside just to change our minds. Ba-dum-dum. HA! HA! But seriously, there really is nothing in here besides a double bed, the single bunk bed over it, a tiny shelf for a desk and the chair. There is no room for anything else. We’ve never seen a hotel room without any closet or bureaus or drawers (even in the desk). The TV (with the bad clock) is hanging above the desk so it won’t take floor space. The walls are plain white with nothing on them except for a long picture of some yellow and orange flowers. That same picture of flowers is hanging in every hallway and stairwell that we’ve seen, but they’re either sideways out there or they’re sideways in here. The bathroom is decent enough sized, considering, but there are no shelves in there-- not even a soapdish in the shower. The shower head has broken from it’s holder too. This night will be our fourth and last one here. We’ll be glad to put this one behind us. We usually don’t mention the names of hotels in the blog, but let’s just say if you see the words “Premiere” and “Classe” together in the name of a hotel, it’s probably not “premiere” and it sure ain’t “classy.” (While reading this writing back to the girls as their bedtime story, the railing to the bunk gave way and Emma came tumbling down. She looks like she bit her lip and has a bloody nose, but she’ll be fine.)

Paris itself has a graffiti problem, and seems dirty. Maybe not as dirty as New York, but dirty nonetheless. Scott would say, “What do you expect? It’s full of Frenchmen.” except that it doesn’t seem very PC. Julie is more charitable and says that we’re not city people. While we’ve had fun in Paris, we do seem to enjoy ourselves more when we are in the Alps or the countryside. That’s been something we’ve known ever since our honeymoon when we started in D.C., and then scrapped those plans after a taste of the traffic and crowds and went to explore the battlefields of rural Virginia. The same is true here, and we’ll be looking to the countryside, on this last leg of the trip back to Zurich. There were a few more sites in Paris that we would have liked to have seen up close, like the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysees, for example, but we’ll wait for now. We’ll drive back into Paris tomorrow to see them instead. HA HA! No, the Tour de France arrives in town tomorrow. We won’t be anywhere near the crowds for that one.