Tuesday, May 17, 2011

The Eiffel Tower at night

 Tuesday May 17th

Last night we visited the Eiffel Tower for the last time. As I’ve said before, the Eiffel Tower is beautiful during the day, but absolutely stunning at night.  We have gone several times just to sit at the Trocerado and watch the tower light up, but up until last night we have not actually ascended the tower at night to look out of the city.  But as Katie said, “It is the City of Lights,” so we figured we should look out on the city itself all lit up just once. 
We got to the tower around 8:50 and the sun was just starting to sink towards the horizon.  The line was about 40 minutes long for the elevator. We had planned just to walk to the 2nd stage, but you aren’t allowed to walk up at night. So about 9:30 we took the elevator to the 2nd stage and watched the sun set.  The sun slowly sank below the horizon and the lights of Paris slowly but surely began to come on.  A few lights came on at first and then more and more until the entire city was twinkling below up and a full moon glowed overhead.  The lights within the tower had come on as well and the tower stood behind us glowing against the dark night.

A few minutes before 10pm we sat down with our backs to the railing, looking up at the tower rising towards it’s summit.  Precisely at 10, the tower began to twinkle as the light show began.  We had watched the light show from the Trocadero several times and it was fun to see it up so close.  We could see in individual lights blinking on and off and the effect as always was simply stunning.  It was such a disappointment when the light show stopped as suddenly as it began.  We took one more long look at the glowing tower and the twinkling city and headed home.


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