Eiffel Of Course

Thursday we were determined to get up the Eiffel Tower.  Earlier in the week we showed up in the late morning only to find a incredibly long line (made longer than normal because one of the lifts was not operating.  So we decided to check out other things that day, and promised to return earlier on Thursday morning.  We made a really good start and were at the Eiffel Tower grounds before the gates opened at 9 AM.  We thougtht we would be the crowd, but we were wrong - lots of other people had the same idea - but this time we were going to wait it out.  90 minutes later we were ascending the the second level of the Eiffel Tower - plenty high enough to see all around Paris, and given the wind that day we figured being at the top might not be a pleasant experience anyway.

While waiting in line a whole group of what looked to be Tibetan monks came to visit the famous Paris landmark as well.  I'm not sure they were actually from Tibet, and there were women among them (I wasn't sure if Tibetan Buddists had female monks). However they did create quite a stir amongst the crowd waiting to get tickets for the Eiffel Tower.

Buddhist monks (?) at the Eiffel Tower - they acted like all the other tourists, if not for their attire they wouldn't have stood out at all.

 Once we got up the tower we looked around at Paris, pointing out familiar landmarks, and locating where we were staying.  There were plenty of people up there with us - the Eiffel Tower gets 7 million visitors a year.  When it was built for the Paris Exhibition in 1889 it was the tallest structure in the world, and by the end of the exhibition it had had 2 million visitors, quite a amazing number considering the era and how fewer people would have been travelling in those years.

Beth and Joshua pointing out where our apartment is.

After a half an hour you've pretty well seen everything there is to see, and since the wind of blowing was rather cool, we walked back down.  We rode up the lift, but walked down - it was quite manageable and much faster than waiting for the lift. After the Eiffel Tower we went back to Notre Dame to get some more crepes and to return to a few stores we had found earlier in the week.  Then we headed back to the apartment following one of the walking tours Beth had in a book.  It was a tour through the Latin Quarter and ended up at the Pantheon, which is literally one block from our apartment. We realized on our last full day in Paris that we had only begun to scratch the surface - there is so much to see or do in that city, but alas our time was running out.

A view from the Eiffel Tower - the domed building on the right of the picture is the Paris Pantheon, our apartment building was right behind it.  This view is essentially looking over the Latin Quarter - the fascinating part of Paris we called home for a week.