my  block

where uzairs roam

Note: As noted, this post was started in Paris, but I was cut short by my laptop battery, and since haven’t bothered finishing it. Well, here it is…

This entry is being composed from the second story of the Eiffel Tower, my reward for lugging my laptop (and charger) around all day in my backpack. Now let’s see how long the damn battery lasts (tragedy of tragedies — I brought the right converter for the wall socket, but they have an extra spoke here for earth that won’t let me plug it in).

I saved the Eiffel Tower for the end of the day, so I could have my “there’s something missing, something missing I know — there’s just one place I’ve got to go!” moment. I did Notre Dame first thing today (well, walked by Saint Chapel first…), with the audio guide and everything. I decided not to do the bell tower because the line was so long — plus, I’m sure it looks much better at night, so I’m going to do it tomorrow, IA. The cathedral was very cool, and I took a lot of pictures. It was a little bizarre to see a glass confessional set up in the first vestibule, and a line of people outside waiting to see the priest!

After the cathedral (and a quick strawberry/apricot jam crepe), I walked up along the Seine’s south bank and crossed over on the Louvre Bridge. I have to say, the Louvre’s pyramids look completely out of place. They also make the whole place a giant greenhouse, so it was boiling inside. Thankfully, the actual art is in the exhibition wings, so I was only inside the pyramid long enough to get my ticket.

I didn’t want to spend the whole day indoors at the Louvre, so I decided I’d check out the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa, and whatever else I saw on the way. Of course, that plan changed when I got to the actual art. I started off in the Sully wing’s Greco-Roman sculpture gallery, and made my way to the Danon wing. The room with the Venus de Milo was absolutely packed, so I only took a short peek and then kept going. Honestly, the Venus and Mona Lisa were huge disappointments — both pieces are fairly small, and I’m not technically grounded enough to appreciate their beauty, I guess. The crowd they attracted (both tourists and security) didn’t do much to help. On the other hand, a lot of other pieces I saw, particularly in the Renaissance section, were awesome. And I mean ‘awesome’ in the breath-taking sense, not the Valley-Girl sense. I took pictures of the ones I really liked, but because of glare, angles and reflections, the paintings aren’t done justice. By the time I’d wandered towards the exit, it was 5:45, and I was unceremoniously kicked out. It’s ridiculous they close that early, particularly in the summer.

Just as well though, since I had things to do! I raced up to the Champs Elysees, got off at the George V station (someone explain to me why half of Paris is named after leaders/places from other countries — witness President Kennedy Boulevard, Franklin D. Roosevelt Avenue, Place de la Bastille de Stalingrad etc.) and walked up towards the Arc De Triomphe. I took a detour on the way, into a shop called Celio that had a sale on t-shirts and, after purchasing two, continued on to the Arc. Yay, now what? The Arc is in the middle of a very busy round-about, with tour buses, honking taxis and, on this day, construction work, all going on while tourists pose for pictures. In fact, when I asked a Belgian lady to take my picture, she and her poor family had to wait about five minutes for a tour bus to get out the way before she could take it! (She seemed quite happy with my camera in her hands — I offered to have someone else take it but she wouldn’t hand it back — so I’m not feeling too guilty…)

Right, mission accomplished, on to the Eiffel Tower! I took the Metro from Charles de Gaulle Station to Trocadero, which put me right behind the Palais de Chaillot, the best approach to the Tower. I turned the corner into the Palais’ (?) courtyard, and there it was! After snapping a few pictures and grabbing a sugar crepe (5 Euros — clearly, the commercial opportunities of the mad tourist season aren’t lost on the locals), I walked over the bridge to the tower, a sense of the sheer enormity of the thing creeping over me. It’s huge. I mean HUGE. I’ve seen the Sears Tower in Chicago, and while it’s obviously on a different scale altogether, this thing is way more impressive, not least because it’s composed of smaller pieces whose size you can actually comprehend, rather than one monolithic column of concrete (try visualising ‘a million’; now try visualising a thousand piles of ‘a thousand’…easier, no?).

The lines to go up snaked all through the base of the tower, I picked the one I thought was the shortest, though the reason soon became clear: not all of the legs offered elevators to go up. I was in line at the South leg, which meant running up the first two stories of stairs (easy, with ‘Renegades of Funk’ blasting in my headphones, and middle-aged Korean people to race up). By the time I got to the second story, the sun had started to set. I took a peek over the side and then queued for 20 minutes for the elevator to the top floor. It was quite thrilling being in a monument where Lois Lane was once trapped and rescued by Superman.

The top of the tower was pretty crazy. When you get off the elevator, you’re in an enclosed observation area. It’s a convenient place to look out over the city, particularly when it’s rainy or windy, and they’ve also got markers indicating how far various cities of the world are from the tower — and yes, Islamabad was on the list! (Note, I was too lazy to shave before heading out. My bad. No diggity, no doubt.) Anyway, I was eager to get to the top while there was still some sunlight, so I didn’t actually even see the distance markers till I was on my way down.

The highest observation deck is weird in that it’s basically a massive chicken coop (probably to prevent jumpers). The way it was packed when I was up there completed the analogy: everyone was running around like headless chickens posing and searching for good shots while ducking everyone else’s cameras. Oh, and there are massive lightning rods on all sides — try imagining headless chickens being electrocuted. Some muppet had the incredibly cheesy idea of putting life-size wax models of Monsieur Eiffel and others poring over blueprints inside exhibition booths; these were uniformly ignored by everyone. Thankfully, even in tourist over-drive, people were kind enough to stop and take pictures for others, perhaps sort of sensing being at the top of the Eiffel Tower is an emotionally significant moment for everyone. The picture with the telescope was taken by an Australian dude who blurted out, ‘Thank God, someone who speaks English!’ when I asked him. :) The coolest thing, by far, was looking down the Champs de Mars and spotting flashbulbs going off randomly below — you didn’t even have to look hard, they were all over the place! Surreal-ity.

I don’t suppose I spent more than 20 minutes at the very top. The queue to get down to the second storey took another 20 minutes, and now here I am, loyally typing everything up. Everyone started ooh-ing and aah-ing a couple minutes ago; turns out there are special lights that go on for the first 10 minutes of every hour that have just gone on. Ooh, they’re like halogen lamps, lots of little ones that outline the whole tower. Very cool. [The rest of this post, and some of the stuff above, have been added/edited since.]

The walk back down to the bottom gave me a bit of a fright: I missed a step and was in limbo for half a second! This was immediately after I had looked over the side of the stairwell (to see innumerable, well-lit chunks of steel bolted together, extending down and down and down…) and checked the barriers for rickety-ness.

I had decided on the way down that I would check if any of the cinemas on the Champs de Elysees had an upcoming screening of Superman Returns (so what if I didn’t like it the first time…) but unfortunately it was well after 11 when I got there, and things were mostly closing down. So I hopped on the train, made my way back to Place de Clichy, stopped at the Halal burger place on the corner (seriously amazing how I ended up at a hotel next door to this place) and then turned in for the night.

That, ladies and gentlemen, was day 1.