Journey to the Eiffel Tower

A month ago I had my kids do an activity on the Eiffel Tower.  They had to find and write down five facts about the Eiffel Tower and either print out or draw a picture.  They were already excited to see the Eiffel Tower… they had been since Chris and I had returned from our Europe trip two summer’s ago saying how much we loved Paris… but now they could hardly contain their excitement.  It’s the one thing they all wanted to see in Europe.

For the few days before we left for Paris I started working on Luke.  When the kids would come home from school Luke would explain… “We’re going on a tower and we’re going to go up up up and we’re going to be so big!”  jumping up and down as he spoke.  Yep, he was excited too.  We all were.

We left for Paris at 7:45am on Friday morning.  Our GPS, affectionately named Queen Elizabeth because of her English accent, told us the trip would take just under five hours.

An hour into our trip, the autobahn, with normal ‘no speed limits’ turned to road construction with a speed limit.  Following speedy traffic we suddenly saw a flash of light come directly into our van.  We both realized at the same time. 'Crap, we just got a ticket.’  Here the polizei don’t pull you over to give tickets.  There are hidden cameras along the side of the road.  If you’re going too fast when you approach it, it takes a picture of you, which is apparently clear as day, and which they then mail to your home with your fee.  (One of our friends thinks it would be funny to wear Santa hats and get a ticket on purpose… just for a great a Christmas card picture.)  Anyway, Chris is a little bummed about his new ‘record’.  We’ve learned where the cameras are in Heidelberg, and are now learning the location of cameras on the way to Paris, thank you very much construction.

France is a country of toll roads.   As soon as we crossed the border we had to stop and pay a toll, and several more thereafter.  Chris joked that the rest stops had better be better than Germanys if we were paying all this money to drive on their roads.  {I’ve already talked about Germany’s rest  stops… they’re awful.}  Soon enough we had wiggly kids who needed an emergency rest room.  We pulled over and took the whole family.  First was the men’s saloon style bathroom.  Small flapping saloon style doors that led to a small room totally visible to everyone else except for a certain area.  The girls were shocked.  Next Chris opened up one of the bathrooms… perfectly clean, by the way… to find a hole in the ground.  (Remember the bathrooms in one of the Paris cafes, you Europe trip friends?… yeah, the same.)  I have no idea how people squat and keep themselves clean.  It must be an acquired skill.  Another stall like that one and then a ‘handicapped stall’ with a normal toilet and sink.  Hallelujah.   All three girls and I piled in to take turns.  Katie was so relieved there was soap.  Yes, it was wonderful.   Katie, being done first opened the door and went back outside.  The rest of us were just finishing drying our hands… when all of a sudden water started flooding out of several spouts on the door side of the floor.  We screamed and tried to jump over the water as we exited the bathroom and then started laughing.    Apparently when the bathroom door is opened it signals the water to pour out cleaning the floor after every use… of course it didn’t know three people were still inside.  Ah, too funny.  Now we know.     It is the cleanest rest stop bathroom we’ve ever seen… well, until Paris – but I’ll talk about that later.

Right before entering Paris we stopped to fill up the van with gas, having to pay full Euro price, instead of our military discount for Esso stations in Germany.  We were also able to use our first ‘Merci’ while buying sandwiches to eat in the van.  Interesting sandwiches… tuna fish with ham, tomato and egg slices.  Not bad, I guess.

We had rented a Parisian 3 bedroom apartment just three blocks from the Louvre.  An amazing location, but with no parking.  The rental company suggested a Parking Garage just 16 blocks away.  That’s a big sarcastic ‘just’.   When mapping it out in the days prior to leaving, we decided that we would drive to the agency to pick up the key, then Chris would drive us to the apartment where we would unload, and wait while he parked the van and walked back.      But that’s not what happened at all.

We followed Queen Elizabeth’s instructions getting into the city.  But upon entering, looked at each other with wide eyes and though ‘what have we done’.  Paris traffic is like nothing we’ve seen before. Worse than New York City… worse because instead of ‘stop and go’ traffic it’s just ‘go and go’ traffic… cars speeding along driving where ever they want to, turning with out signaling, merging into tight spaces… it’s just insane.  The major roads of the city are wide enough for two or three or four cars to drive on… I don’t know exactly because there are no lanes!  No nice white dashed lines to tell cars to stay in their own lane.  There ARE no lanes.  Just a mess of cars trying to drive on the same road.  Whenever we turned, we turned with a whole mass of cars turning the same way… but not staying in their lanes of course because there are no lanes.   The most shocking were the motorcycles weaving their way through traffic at lightning speed.  Mobs and mobs of them.   We turned off the music, quieted the excited kids and focused on driving.  Chris was happy for my assistance as I called out ‘watch out for this guy over here’ or ‘be careful’ every few seconds.    We both had a kind of panicked smile plastered across our face ready to start giggling any second.    We must be idiots.  We knew Paris traffic was bad and of course had planned to park our van and use the metro the entire weekend… but we didn’t know it was like this.  Our agency most certainly did NOT say “Park in Parking Garage 22 – Good luck getting there! Caution: Driving may be hazardous to your health.”

With Queen Elizabeth calmly speaking directions we found the road where the rental agency was, but couldn’t see one place to park, let alone slow down enough to really look.  Change of plans… let’s find the garage, PARK THE VAN, and figure it out from there.  10 minutes later we were safely parked under ground.  That’s when we really started laughing.  Of course Chris thought the whole thing was fun.  

Chris (and Matthew in the backpack) headed off to find the agency on foot and was back in no time.  Then we grabbed our luggage, put Luke in the little stroller, and paraded through the 16 blocks to our apartment.  I don’t think we went unnoticed.

Our three bedroom apartment was on the third floor above a restaurant and a shoe store.  It was great… only it didn’t have soap.  Yep, Katie was pretty ticked.  We settled in a bit while Chris and Ryan went back to the van to get a few more things… like all the food and snacks and Matthew’s portable crib.

When they got back it was 4:40.     We had purchased tickets for the Eiffel Tower for 6:00pm thinking we had PLENTY of time to hang out by the Eiffel Tower before going up.  Now we just needed to get there in time.  If we showed up after 6:15 our tickets would be no good.  We loaded up with sweatshirts, treats and maps and headed outside in search of our Metro.  We purchased tickets, filed all eight of us through the gates (the kids loved it!) and wandered through the underground tunnels in the direction of our train.   The kids all found seats on the metro and immediately got out their Paris notebooks… little notebooks just for this trip to take notes, draw pictures and write about all their Paris adventures.  Emily wrote: “The Eiffel tower is big and is so awesome.  I love the Eiffel Tower” …before we even saw it.  When I asked her about it, she said, “I know I’m going to love it Mom”.   After switching metros half way through, we arrived at the Ecole Militaire stop and popped up above ground.  The kids immediately searched in all directions but couldn’t see the tower.  We started running down the street.  The kids eyed the top of the tower behind the buildings and everyone pointed.  I pretended not to see it.   The kids started jumping up and down point at it.  So exciting!  I’m sure we were quite the scene. A clearly American family of 8 running down the street pointing and shouting about the Eiffel Tower… yeah, maybe no one noticed.   A couple more blocks of running and we were there – underneath it.  6:00 on the dot.  We got in the very short ‘pre-purchased ticket’ line and caught our breath while vendors tried to sell us miniatures of the tower.  The other line was HUGE and we were so grateful we had pre-purchased tickets… even though the adventures of the day had us nearly missing it.

Emily and Mean waiting in line… with Emily’s treasured metro ticket in her pocket.  She’s totally keeping it.

My first picture of the Eiffel Tower… from underneath.

From the 2nd Level… views of the Seine River, Trocadero and the Palais de Chaillot.  Just gorgeous.

Immediately arriving on the second level, we got in line for elevators to the top.  There are two types of Tickets… ones just to the 2nd level, and ones to the top and we purchased the latter.   When Chris and I were here before the Eiffel Tower was closed to tours so this was everyone’s first time up.  It was beautiful weather and an ideal  time of day to take in the view.  It really was perfect.

Views from the top…

A picture from inside the elevator...  See that lit up carousel on the bottom middle… that’s where we’re headed to next.

A picture from the lower Second level to the upper Second level…      By the time we got back down the sky was darkening and the Eiffel tower was lit up.  Beautiful!

It was 8 o'clock by the time we got down and we were hungry.  We opted not to stop at level one of the Eiffel Tower for 300 Euro meals at the fancy shmancy restaurant and instead walked across the street to THE best crepes stand in Paris.  For Katie it was love at first bite.  She and I ate nutella crepes with whipped cream.  Chris and the boys ate Banana Nutella crepes and Emily, Megan and Ryan opted for hot dogs.  We ate our crepes on the park bench, rode the carousel and then headed across the bridge towards the Palais de Chaillot for one of the best views of the Tower before heading home on the Metro.

Eiffel tower from the top of Trocadero Square…