my soft spot: Last day in Paris: Eiffel Tower pictures

My friend Lydie urged me to buy Eiffel Tower tickets early on in our planning. I am so glad she did! We got the last tickets for the entire week we were going to be in Paris. They were for 8PM on May 12, the night before we flew home.

In the end, they worked out very well. It was a lovely way to finish out our trip. When we got there, it was still light, so we got to see the city of Paris in the fading light, and then lit up for the evening. We got into a short line, where a woman demanded to see my tickets. She tried to take them out of my hands and I resisted. There are a lot of scam artists in Paris these days, and plenty of them hang out near the Eiffel Tower. I pointed out that she had no I.D. whatsoever. She petulantly showed me her sleeve that said "Tour Eiffel," but since I didn't know it was a uniform, it could have been a tourist jacket. Anyway, she was satisfied that we were in the right line and let us go forward toward the x-ray machines. While we waited, a man was giving a detailed narrative on the tower to a group of tourists. I couldn't exactly tell what language he was speaking, but thought it was Japanese, so I jokingly asked Charlie, who has had one semester of Japanese, to translate. The tourguide spotted us and I fessed up--and then he told us he had been speaking Korean. Whoops!

We got through the security point and went right into a big elevator that went up at an angle through the leg of the tower. At the first level, we changed to another elevator that took us up to the 2nd level, where there are lots of shops. We got out and looked around them a bit, then walked around outside, finally getting into the small elevator to go up to the top level. It is really beautiful, and high enough that my fear of heights only kicked in when the tower shifted in the wind (which was often enough!)