Paris: Day 3 pt. 2

Hopping off the RER we walked about a block to the Eiffel tower.



it was kind of hard to miss!



We went off to buy tickets, pushing through the massive throng of people to the ticket counter - which barely had a line! The hell? All the people hovering around the tower were there to sell you stuff, beg for money, or possibly - pick your pocket. Huh. The sea of humanity at the tower was the busiest we'd seen any location in Paris, to date. It was intimidating! The 'salesmen' were really pushy - trying to get you to buy cheap scarves or Eiffel Tower key chains. I just walked as fast as I could and said "No" a lot.


We made it to the first floor (really, the second) and jumped in line for the top.




You can see the shadow of the tower here.


Heading for the top!


The gears for the elevators! Cool!



So, the Mister and I are standing in this crazy line, which lasted about an hour, to get to the top of tower. While we were waiting, we snapped a lot of pics - as you do when you are on vacation. Now, keep in mind that there are FOUR elevators dumping people onto the platform and only ONE elevator to take you to the top. This means that the line gets a little insane! There are two types of tickets you can buy, one for the 1st platform and one that takes you to the top - so there were folks who just wanted to take pictures from the safety of the first platform mingling in with people pushing to get in the crazy line. I just tried to ignore the hassle and enjoy the location. Unfortunately, this crazy system allowed some people to step in front of us. Normally, this would drive me to scream at people but, I was attempting to take deep breaths and acknowledge that we're all shuffling off to the same place. The fellow behind me, however, couldn't let it go. He took to bitching about the Mister and I snapping pics and "allowing" people to cut. I thought he was complaining in Spanish as I understood him perfectly, so I turned around and chewed him out in Spanish - basically telling him "hey, I'm on Vacation and when you are on vacation, you take some pictures. If it's a HUGE problem for you, step in front of me!". He did but, his wife was FURIOUS! She wouldn't even talk to him, she was so embarrassed. Jeff whispered ' so much for a romantic trip to the top of the Eiffel Tower for that guy'- which cracked me up!


At last we made it! There's a champagne bar at the top that we HAD to sample! Not a bad way to end the day, sipping champagne at the top of the Eiffel Tower!