In a city called Romance

In the beginning...
A few weeks ago when we arrived Holland, Abi, our training group’s course leader, sold to us the idea of visiting Paris, which we toyed with for a while. Last weekend, about seven of us finally agreed to embark on this adventurous journey, travelling by road to Paris from Amsterdam ! We spent close to eight hours on the road because the bus had to make some stops along the way.

After the long hours on the road, we were all surprised it wasn’t a tiring journey, as we arrived Paris the early hours of Saturday morning.

Since it was dawn, the weather was quite friendly. It wasn’t therefore much of a problem waiting for nearly two hours for Nardine, our host, to pick us up at the bus station. “I’m really sorry guys for arriving so late to pick you up,” she apologises. “I was held up in traffic.”

We later discovered that the traffic was bad in Galleini that day because of the construction work going on in the Metro line for that route.

After refreshing ourselves, we hit the road almost immediately. The first point of call, of course, was the famous Avenue des Champs-Elysees. It is a very long avenue, lined with trees on both sides. On this road also is world famous fashion designers like Hugo Boss, Louis Vuitton, among others, and this is also where the rich and famous in Paris live.

From this avenue, we moved towards the great Eiffel Tower , Paris ’ hallmark. The week before, I saw a report on CNN on the refurbishment of the tower.

Hence, when we arrived there that evening, the tower stood tall in its resplendent glory. The paint was still shining and there was a long queue of tourists waiting to climb the tower.

We were told the maintenance of the tower includes applying 50 to 60 tons of paint every seven years to protect it from rust, and this happens to be the seventh year. In order to maintain a uniform appearance to an observer who is below, three separate colours of paint are used on the tower, with the darkest at the bottom and the lightest at the top. Occasionally, the colour is changed, as it is currently painted in a shade of brownish-bronze, and named after its designer, Gustave Eiffel, an engineer, and it is the tallest building in Paris and the fifth-tallest structure in France as a whole.

There were many people milling around the tower when we arrived, and it was not a surprise therefore to know that more than 200 million people had visited the tower since its construction in 1889, including 6,719,200 just in 2006. This makes it the most visited monument in the world. It has a 24 meters antenna and the structure itself is 324 metres high.

The first and second levels are accessible by stairways and lifts. A ticket booth at the south tower base sells tickets to access the stairs, which begin at that location. At the first platform, the stairs continue up from the east tower and the third level summit is only accessible by lift.

From the first or second platform, the stairs are open for anyone to ascend or descend, regardless of whether they have purchased a lift ticket or stair ticket. The actual count of stairs includes nine steps to the ticket booth at the base, 328 steps to the first level, 340 steps to the second level, and 18 steps to the lift platform on the second level.

I was able to arrive at this figure because the step count is printed periodically on the side of the stairs to give an indication of progress of ascent. The majority of the ascent allows for an unhindered view of the area directly beneath and around the tower, although some short stretches of the stairway are enclosed.

We exited through the lift on the third level, as we could not continue because it was late. It was past ten in the evening, although the sun was still up! Nature played a trick on us there as we thought we had all the time in the world!