Paris : Le Tour Eiffel!
Paris : Le Tour Eiffel!On Tuesday morning (18th September) Steve and I checked out of our hotel at Garè De Nord and migrated our belongings to our new home for the day/night at a hotel near Garè De Lyon. On arrival we discovered that the dècor in our new hotel was particularly girly... purple infact! LOL.. oh well after a few hours I figured we wouldn't even notice the colour of the walls!
After a little rest in our new hotel room, Steve and I set out on foot for our daily dose of exercise and a visit to the Eiffel Tower. That particular day Paris gave us some nice cool weather (after our drenching the night before), I found myself rugging up in a couple of layers. After the nice sunshine we had in Paris until then, feeling a bit cold was a bit of a surprise. Steve and I walked along The Seine River for what seemed like FOREVER to reach the Eiffel Tower. We passed the Museè D'Orsay (which we had been told to visit and was apparently well worth a visit!) and eventually found ourselves near to the tower, but I wasn't gonna climb that thing on an empty stomach... So, we just convieniently happen to come across a small stand selling food. The smell of Crèpes coming from there was just too good to resist, so I marched up slapped down my Euro's and left the stand with a delicious banana and chocolate (I mean nice fudgy WARM melted chocolate) crèpe! Mmm Yummy! Steve was a bit more reserved in his choice of a HOT DOG... which was still nice (because I always make it my business to steal a bite of anything Steve is eating).
So, after our bellies were sufficiently full, we stood beneath the Eiffel Tower considering the idea of how far up we should go. Eleven Euro's to the third level.... but we thought "Eh, what the heck? Right?" "If we going to do it, we were going to do it right"..so we made an executive decision to get to the top. First of the hard decisions made, the next was to decide which leg of the tower (there is a North, East, South and West facing leg to ascend on). The west leg elevator was closed, so one out of three.. my logic was it didn't matter which one we took because when we got to each level we'd be able to walk around.... I figured, choose the one with the shortest Queue... good idea IN THEORY! Actually, the tower wasn't particularly crowded that day, because it was getting rather brisk outdoors and we didn't get there until later in the afternoon.
Still, with the crowd dying down we didn't anticipate how long it would take to get up to the top. At ground level it felt like we were waiting for AGES...finally the elevator..and we made it up to Level 2. At Level 2 there was an indoor area we could disappear into to defrost. We got ourselves a hot chocolate in the cafè and had a look in a couple of the souvenir shops on that level. It had also been a while since I'd been to the girl's room.. LOL so half way up, I had to visit the little room otherwise I wasn't going to make it to the top! The line for the elevator to the 3rd and final level of the tower was pretty long, so there was quite a wait for that. To be honest after standing out in the cold for THAT long, I was pretty much over the tower at that level. I was pretty keen to get to the top, so we had a quick look around and headed to the queue for the elevator for level 3.
Level 3, was alot smaller width wise, and they had an indoors part that had cities of the world and how far each of them were from the Eiffel Tower. *chuckles* I had to take my cliche' shot of Steve pointing at the Australian Flag and Sydney, 16,962km.. Did we really fly that far? Actually, Melbourne is probably further but at that moment I had flashbacks to my flight experience between Sydney and Hong Kong *ugh* .. I guess once you get to the top, you truely realise you are in Paris and then you realise just how high UP you are!?
The tower itself, is named after it's engineer Gustave Eiffel and completed in 1889. It weighs 7,300 tonnes and apparently shifts away from the sun by up to 18cm due to the expansion of the metal on the side facing the sun, as well as swaying up to 7cm in the wind. Cool uh? Still, climbing the thing.. OKAY catching the elevator up had been such an experience that I was SO ready to get back down onto the ground... On the way down, we decided to have a nosey around on Level 1. On level 1 there was a place to hide and get warm and small historic display. There was another small cafè and a couple of restaurants as well as a POST OFFICE and an ATM. We figured we couldn't get off the Eiffel Tower until we had at least had a drink in one of the bars, so we planted our backsides in one of the bars and ordered an expensive 8 Euro glass of Bordeaux each... and sipped away quietly and looked out the magnificent windows adjoining the bar. By then, the sun had graced us with its presence and was setting rather spectacularly.. It was THAT moment, I think that will be burned into my memories....
The sun was setting and were both a bit knackered, so we decided to climb off this contraption and head home via the Mètro... on the way we were looking for a Metro station, so I approached some ladies along the way to ask for directions and greeted them in really bad french and asked them if they spoke English. I asked them for directions in English and waited for a response. At that point, one of the ladies turned to her friend and ask her where we could find the Metro station we were looking for ... in POLISH! I had to laugh at that moment, and proceed to gas bag to them in Polish with Steve standing next to me looking quite amazed. We chatted for a while and they asked me where I was from because even though my Polish was pretty good, it was obvious to them that I was not a native of Poland - apparently I speak the language with an accent! How weird! We did manage to get the information we wanted and proceeded to the Metro station to head back to Gare De Lyon and back to our hotel room.
We picked up a dinner around the corner from our hotel room, and finished the day with a nice Italian dinner (Carbonara...seriously guys...what else would I have chosen?) and a considerable amount of wine... and stumbled our way home for a good night's sleep.. The next day we were heading out of Paris, down through France to Cannes - The French Riviera here we come! Eat your heart out people! ;o)