La Tour Eiffel

The Eiffel Tower is the definitive icon of Paris, and is absolutely irresistable, even apart from a great application of steel construction! We have visited the tower a couple of times this stay, and have photographed it repeatedly from numerous vantage points around the city. On one daytime visit, we approached it from the Place du Trocadero where we paused for coffee, having found one of the very few places you are able to sit in the feeble Winter sun in all of the city. Inside this restaurant was very crowded, but we sat outside where there were very few people, and enjoyed, not only the sun, but also a unique view of the steel tower through the buildings of the Trocadero, apparently one of the few cafes with a good view of the tower (see 1st photo).

The golden statues outside the museums which separate the Place du Trocadero from the Eiffel Tower were as glorious as we remembered them from 1980, although this beautiful space is somewhat blighted by the numerous sellers of miniature towers for EUR1, also as it was then. They seem to be quite offended when you let them know that you don't want to buy one!


The tower itself is not quite as tall as you expect it to be. The base is crowded by tourists queuing up to ride the lifts to the first, second or top levels. The queue was hours long on both our visits, so we didn't bother, and it's amazing that only one of the four pillars has its lifts going in the presence of such crowds. On our second visit, they had more pillars going, but the queues were just too long.

The Parc du Champs de Mars, the long and beautiful park between the Tower and what is presumably Napoleon's military school, is a very pleasant walk, and is full of tourists positioning themselves for photographs of the tower on top of the heads etc. Something new (to us) at the end of the Parc in Place Joffre is an attractive and modern peace memorial (2nd photo), rather interestingly situated directly in front of the Ecole Militaire!

We made our second visit to the Tower at dusk. The 3rd photo is taken from the Pont de Bir Hakeim. It looks cold, and it was! By observing the temperatures showing on TV, and the current temperatures which appear on some City info signs and pharmacy signs, it varies between 4 & 7 here. Whether we actually think it's cold seems unrelated to these values with several obvious potential explanations. But when it feels cold, it's really really shivering weather!

We wanted to wait to 6:00pm for the nightly "on-the-hour" sparkling to start up, but we were so cold that we retreated to the nearby Hilton Hotel for two excellent hot chocolates, not to mention a well needed toilet stop. The sparkling display is shown, rather inedequately, in the 4th photo in this post. The human eye has a longer retention time than our camera shutter, so it seems like the Tower is densely covered in sparkles, but the camera reveals that not so many are on at any one time.