Paris 5 - La Tour Eiffel

 Yes, still struggling to catch up. Life happens fast. Since Paris, over the past several weeks, I’ve been to the US, to Somalia twice and now am in a hotel south of Dakar, Senegal (with an embarrassing carbon footprint). Hopefully I’ll be able to carve out some time to write between meetings. Anyway, back to France.

 

Eiffel Tower

This is the day we would visit what is, apparently, the world’s most visited monument (of those with an entrance fee). As I mentioned previously, the volume of visitors and security checks were significant changes to visiting the Tower. But otherwise, much about the visit was familiar to me from when I did this long ago. Though I’ve visited the city many times over the years, I’d only been up in the Tower once before. That day it was a relatively hazy and I remember that the view from the second level ended up being almost better than the top due to the visibility challenges. Coming back this time, the weather was spectacular.

amusing ourselves, picnicking before the visit

We arrived early and decided to have a picnic on the grounds below the tower, enjoying the perfect weather and taking in the beautiful surroundings. Of the days that we were in Paris, this was probably the warmest and clearest. You can’t know this when you book weeks in advance but there’s no question that we ended up timing it pretty well.

* * *

Even with the prebooking and efforts to bring some order to the chaos of such a major attraction, there is still considerable queuing and waiting. Before long, however, we were in the lift with about a dozen others making our way to the first level. It did occur to me that even a few months ago, Covid would have made me hesitant to be in such a tight space with so many people. It even crossed my mind on this occasion.

view from the top

Remembering the drill the last time I did this, as soon as we were out of the lift, we made our way to the lift to take us to the second level. And from there, we made our way to the longest lift to the very top.

There were crowds but the do a good job of managing the flow of visitors. They must have some analytics to inform them how long people generally linger at the top. I would think it varies depending on the weather. If it’s cold or hazy, it’s obviously less interesting to hang out up there. On this occasion, however, conditions for viewing were near perfect. It was breezy, clear and warm.

After about a half hour, we would take the elevator down to level 2. From there, we were unanimous in wanting to take the stairs to level one and then to the ground level.

By the time we were back on the grounds of the park below, it was late afternoon and time to begin making our way back to the B&B. Given that we had had such busy days leading up to this, it was nice to have a day that was not as full. Time for tea.