Paris Day1.2 - The Eiffel Tower

I am pissed!! I just lost an hour's work on this entry. After my write up, I press Publish Post and what happens? Server Error!! What the ...... And what happens?? Cannot press BACK to return to the original page. Okay, so I redid this entry rather half-heartedly... Ugh...


Continuing to walk towards the Eiffel Tower.




Our plan was to get to the Eiffel tower and make it to the top of the Eiffel before sunset, so that we can see both the day and night view of Paris from the Eiffel. We probably made it to the base of the Eiffel Tower in time. However, we are obviously too idealistic! There were hardly any tourist when we visited Netherlands. But in Paris, the tourist are everywhere!!


The base of the Eiffel is filled with tourist and we have to queue to buy tickets and then queue to take the lift. As we queue, we lose our precious dayilght!


Here I am waiting for the lift that will bring us to the second tier of the Eiffel tower. You can choose the go to 3 different levels of the Eiffel tower. You pay about 4 Euros to visit the first tier, 7 euros to visit the second tier and 10 euros if you want to go all the way to the top. For 10 euros you can stop and visit the second tier too, because you have to switch to another lift that will being you all the way to the top of the Eiffel. We decide to go all the way out and buy a ticket for the top.


Photos from the second tier of the Eiffel tower. It is still rather bright.













At night, probably from 7pm to 12am, the Eiffel will start sparkling for the first 10 minutes of the hour. These 2 photos were taken between 7-7.30 pm. It is a really pretty sight! We were still on the second tier, so we took these photos of the sparkling Eiffel tip!







Notice that light is slowly fading away.

Officially night time to me.
I guess the point of transition between day time and night time is when all the cars start switching on their headlights and the street lamps and buildings start switching on their lights.


A colourful sky.


Although you can see scenery from miles away, 360 degrees around the Eiffel tower, I guess I like this view best because of the busy road. The headlights contribute to Paris' beautiful night scene and I think this makes this road the most brightly lit view from the Eiffel at night.

After taking some more photos, we decide to take the lift to the top of the Eiffel tower.

Scenery from the top of the Eiffel. Everything looks even smaller and your view extends further.


The view that I like again! Now with the sky darker and the lights more obvious.




The blue strip in the photo is a result of the spotlight from the tip of the Eiffel tower that scans Paris' city night.



We were supposed to meet SC to go to Sacred Heart at 9pm. However, we took longer than expected and were kind of late. This was partly because we were enjoying the view too much, even though it was freezing! Another reason was because we had to queue so much, the whole process of going up and coming down took longer than expected. We queued for tickets, queued for the lift up the second tier, queued for the lift to the top, queued for the lift back to second tier and finally for the lift back to the ground.


Sparking Effel at 9pm.

At 9pm, we have only just reached the metro station nearest the Eiffel. We still have to take the metro for half an hour to another station to meet SC. The sparkling lights come on again, and I sneak a last shot of the Eiffel before rushing into the metro station.

We are half an hour late and luckily for us, SC is still waiting for us 2 late idiots. From the station, we take the funiculaire to the Sacred Heart. You can walk if you don't mind climbing steps. We take a quick tour of the inside of Sacred Heart, because we want to rush off to the Artist Square. It's already 10 plus, and the artist will have all gone home if we are there too late. However, when we reach Artist Square, there are only about 4 stalls left along one side of the road. SC tells us that the square is more crowded earlier on in the night and Qiang and I decide that we must revisit Artist Square again another day. We intended to visit Moulin Rouge that night, but because we were too tired from the hectic day, we decided to leave Moulin Rouge for another day.



2 photographs of the Sacred Heart with different effects.

Paris Day 2