The Eiffel Tower

I am so unlucky, on day two the battery on my camera died and I had forgotten to bring the charger. It is of unusual size and so finding a replacement was pretty much out of the question. Luckily, that morning I had talked to one of the other guys staying in my room, Andre’, and got together with him and three other Brazilians to tour around. Most of the rest of my trip was spent with some or all of this Brazilian group. In the pictures below Claudia, Vincent, and I went to The Arc De Triumph and then to the Eiffel Tower. At the end of the day we went to the Louvre, but that will be a different post. The Arc is beautiful. It has this quality to it where it is really hard to tell how big it is. It fits so nicely with its surrounding that it makes you think it isn’t really that big, but then you see people walking by it and realize its true size. We marched to the top to get the view as well. I think it was 8 BP to get in to the top, no lift, lots of stairs.
The Eiffel Tower is of course the symbol of Paris which is odd considering that it has almost been torn down more than once. It started out as a project from a World’s Fair and kept its life as a radio tower before becoming the beloved landmark that we all know. It is about 950 feet tall and interestingly, in the winter, it will shrink 6 inches. Cool huh? There are three main lifts that take you to the top and three observation decks, but who wants to stop at the first or even second deck? To the top baby!