To the tower!

Nice Day for it

Last time I was in Paris for a holiday was around 40 years ago. Things have changed a bit. The tower is now “fortress Eiffel”. In earlier, simpler, times you could just wander underneath the tower and find the entrances to the lifts or stairs to the top. Now there is an inevitable bag scan and a high fence all around the monument. And rather than just “going up the tower” we have the Eiffel experience. Where you go up the tower and have a plastic glass of champagne. It was very nice though.

If I’d been here a little earlier the Eiffel Tower shadow would have lined up exactly with the road….

For lunch we wandered over to the Printemps store. I’ve got very fond (and probably faulty) memories of a huge open cafeteria at the top of the store with cheap basic food and huge views. This is, of course, now also an “experience”– with prices to match. There were various different eating options (we went for pizza) and the views were as good, but I feel they’ve lost something of Paris here.

Travel tip: There are a few discount tickets for the Metro but the best value one requires you to add a photo ID to the card. You can pay 8 euros for a photo-booth, but you can also use black and white pictures that you can get from a Kiddizoom camera that you might have taken with you. This seemed to work a treat, although nobody ever actually asked to see them.

We spent a while in Fnac. It’s a lovely store. There are quite a few around Paris. They are a cross between a bookshop, game shop, camera shop, audio shop, computer shop and video shop. All very well done with keen prices. And busy too. Hopefully they can stay in business.

After lunch we had a wander back to the hotel, picking up a splendid meal on the way from one of the many restaurants they have around here. I really like Paris.