Oh My Word!: The City of Lights. Cold Version.

After our day in Versailles, John and I headed into Paris to stay with another friend. We dropped off our luggage at her apartment and headed off to... want to take a guess?.. Le Tour Eiffel. Lucky for us, our friend lives about 10 minutes away from the tower. Hop, skip, jump- we're there! And BAM! It's big. Bigger than I thought it would be. It "towers" (haha.. get it???) over the rest of the city. From just about anywhere in Paris, you can see the Eiffel tower. It peeks above buildings, pops out when you look down the street, and when you are way up high, you just can't miss it. When everything else is between 4 and 7 stories tall, something that is 81 stories tall tends to stick out.

Things you should know when you visit the Eiffel Tower in August:
1) It's going to be busy. Real Busy.
2) There are two ways to get up. Stairs and Elevators.
3) The Stairs are cheap.
4) The Elevators are not.
5) The lines for the stairs are non-existent.
6) The line for the Elevators will wrap all the way around the base of the tower.
7) If you have a lot of money and lots of time, go for the Elevators.
8) We have no money and no time. We took the stairs.

Oh, and, it can be cold in Paris in August. I was not so smart and packed shorts and summer dresses. They were covered in a bright yellow Marmont raincoat the whole week. I was -that- American tourist.

It peeks.

No lines for the stairs!

The view from the first floor

We went back to the Tour Eiffel on our last night in Paris to see the light show. It was as beautiful as the tower is tall. I don't think John was so excited about it, but once it started he understood why I had to see it. Mesmerizing.