The Eiffel Tower; the most visited paid attraction in the world

It was nice to see the tower for the first time from the top of Notre Dame. Since Notre Dame is quite far from the tower it wasn’t really that impressive and seemed kind of small. We were a little far away from it most of the week and it looked a little rust coloured. We went to the Eiffel Tower on our last day in Paris. This was mainly due to ticket schedules; you have to group all the Paris museums in a agroup to make the six day museum pass payoff to the maximum. So much for first impressions, that final day we actually visited. It was suddenly larger, and the colour was much improved. We had reserve tickets for 4:30 so that we could see the tower in daylight as well as lit up at night. We were able to go to the

second level but not the top as it was closed that day. We were lamenting this when we overheard a woman say that “this was her third trip to Paris and she finally was able to get to the second level”. I guess the top isn’t open that often. The views were spectacular none the less. I think we did our sightseeing in the correct order as we were able to view what we had spent the last 10 days visiting on foot. We spent a good two and a half hours on top. Once evening arrived we took a few more pictures and headed down. The real pictures are from the ground as the tower is all lit up. It really hit home that you were in Paris, France.

A few tidbits.

Eiffel financed, oversaw the construction of and produced all the steel for his tower. He even had a hand in the design.

The tower was to be removed 20 years after the Paris world fair in1889 when the permit ran out.

In the 80s negotiations took place to temporarily relocate the tower in Montreal for the Montreal Expo.

People of Paris hated the tower initially. I guess the world has always been the same. It is easy to take the negative position on anything. Just read any newspaper from any city on any day.