Paris-Tour Eiffel

We did the tower today. It looked like rain, so after taking the hotel bus to the Opera, we got a cab to the tower. The taxi was new, a Mercedes with smooth jazz, and it was the best ride through Paris we ever had. Very relaxing and well worth E9. After getting out of the cab the bedlam began again.



Plan A was to arrive early and have lunch at the restaurant on the second floor of the tower. Our reservation for the tower was for 13:30 and since we arrived at 11:20 we figured we had plenty of time. Not so. Some helpful Gendarmes pointed us in the direction of the nearest Cafes and we took a walk. Turns out that this was actually quite a good choice. Marcia got a nice omlette sans cheese and I got the salade de jour-greens, tomatoes, harcort vert, bits of fried ham/rasher bacon, and two canard legs.



We still had plenty of time, so I took a short walk looking for le masion art noveau that I saw

from the tourbus the other day. No luck on the house, but I did get some nice photos of the Eiffel Tower and got to see a police bust done with bicycle. We made something of a plan to take the sightseeing boat after the tower, so I did research by hopping on the bus and grabbing some brochures.



Back at the tower we began our long queue. First queue was to get in the North foot-past the usual security and to the next queue. This one was for the elevator to the second floor where we queue again for the elevator to the top. This queue comes with view, for awhile at least. Then into the elevator for a long ride with the Seine falling away bit by bit. The first landing is surrounded by glass from the waist up and a nice rail to hold onto-a nice touch for those of us who appreciate such things. Then up a flight of stairs and behind a cage that one can easily stick a camera through lies all of Paris. Fantastic! The rain was coming in and we got to watch it, so some photos sorta demonstrate this. A tiny flute of champaign is available for E10, so we partook and photograped ourselves. All in all, it was pretty fabulous.



Then we joined the queues for going down and by the time we got to the ground the sun was shining and we were ready to catch another cab to the sushi place we saw near the hotel bus stop. We had lovely sushi and a Japanese French waiter who was as exasperated by anybody's behavior as any French waiter.



We were delighted to see that our favorite driver was behind the wheel of the hotel bus and got us safely home. We also met an Argentine woman who is a flight attendant on Air Emirates. She buys lovely French wines at Monoprix to supply her stash when she is in town. We have been quite interested in the various costumes of flight attendants as they parade through this hotel.



Air Emirates flight attendants wear a little red hat with a cream colored veil and look quite like Jeannie (I Dream of Jeannie). The Korean Air attendants wear shiny teal blouses with cream skirts or trousers. There is a cream colored collar/scarf type thing that sticks out about 10 inches on each side, and as though this was not distinction enough, they have a pencil thin bow thing on the back of their heads. The Thai are the most sensible with traditional floral print long dresses with slits to just below the knee. They have no distinctive head gear, but most have black hair pulled into a bun. I think the airlines should have the Danish design functional work clothes and forget the Paris designers for flight atendant uniforms. They mostly look silly.

Tomorrow we fly to Budapest, so there may be an even longer blog lag than the past two weeks. Ideally I will be editing photos that will make their way to the photoblog the following week in London.

KG