Across Europe

London

Paris

Cathédrale Notre Dame
Hôtel de Ville

Centre Georges Pompidou

musée du Louvre

la Tour Eiffel

Catacombes et Carrières

Le Lapin Agile

Sacré-Coeur
Montparnasse

The middle of April, 2002, continued.

From all over Paris one can see the top of la Tour Eiffel, located in the 7er arrondismont.

The Eiffel Tower was built for the Universal Exhibition in 1889 to celebrate the centenniary of the French Revolution.

Over 300 meters high, it's twice as high as the then-tallest building, the Washington Monument. A temporary structure, it's become the love (and the symbol) of the City of Light. It remained the highest building in the world until the completion of the Chrysler Building, in 1930.

Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, who also designed the iron framework of the Statue of Liberty, was known for his bridge designs. These would become the core of his design of the tower.

This is what it's like to stand off-center, looking up the massive structure. Pictures just don't convey the huge size of this thing. It was misting on the evening we took these pictures. (Because we all had Metro cards we could drop by as desired, and we did visit three times on this trip.) Because we arrived after dinner we were too late to ascend to the top, something that'll have to wait for the next time.

Once I realized that camera movement was unintentionally providing interesting distortions, I took a few more :-) You might notice the AN 2000 appearing on the about halfway up la Tour. It was a few months after the new year, and Parisians had decided to leave the lights as they were, including a very amazing series of flashing lights which you can see on the top portion of the tower. In the last picture you can see the faint outline of a bright beam of light shining from the top of la Tour.

I've already mentioned the Paris Metro. We love to take mass transit, especially since Isaac loves trains so. We'd already done the London Underground, the Tube, and so the Metro seemed even more appropriate. Here's our little man on the way to some sight-seeing.

And here he is on the way back. G'nite tired traveller.

In the next days we'll visit the Catacombes et Carrières de la ville de Paris.

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