Alex and The Eiffel Tower 23/10/2017
For most of his short life, Alex has wanted to visit the Eiffel Tower.
Like so many of his ambitions, Go Jetters is responsible.
Alex is not alone in his admiration.
So impressed was the 1887 Mayor of Blackpool, that after a brief visit, he built a pocket sized replica, but only after refusing Gustave Eiffel's offer to dismantle and ship the original for a song.
He could have driven a hard bargain as Eiffel had cash flow problems and expected to have to demolish the tower after 12 months anyway so was in need of a willing buyer to defray his costs.
When we finally got there, Alex was visibly fizzing with excitement.
La Tour quite literally towers over the 7th arrondissement and it is a pretty narrow street that obscures it completely. Even then it peeks out periodically between the buildings and at night the summit casts a rotating shaft of light across the sky like the Eye of Sauron, given the Baz Luhrmann treatment.
As the rain was falling, the queue was mercifully short and we were in the steamed up lift to the first platform in seconds, before spilling out onto the concourse for our first view of the city from a mere 172 feet.
The Tower is dotted with polished silver telescopes that the grateful nation clearly bought in bulk and distributed to the foreshores of every beach resort with a view worth magnifying. They resemble Art Deco machine guns but even without squinting into the eye piece, the view over the Trocadero on one side and the Champs de Mars on the other, demands a moment of your time.
As low cloud scudded across the Paris skyline, the lift to the second platform took us up to 377 feet but this was only ever a temporary distraction from the caged summit at 905 feet.
At the top, the superstructure sways and flexes across its oil tanker dimensions, and as it contracted by rivet popping degrees in the cold, I had visions of a crack team of small, tough, hammer wielding Frenchmen patrolling for errant fixings in a perpetual game of Whac-A-Mole to keep the thing from dismantling itself.
The cage detracts from the view but at the latest count 349 have perished and so it is a sad necessity. However, as with every romantic jumping off point, there have a been a lucky few including one lady who was blown back in by a gust of wind or another whose fall was reputedly broken by a car roof and is anecdotally said to have married the driver.
Like Clare and I, Alex will probably spend the rest of his life dipping in an out of Paris' endless charms.
For him, Go Jetters may soon be a forgotten phase but I suspect that the Eiffel Tower won't.
Like so many of his ambitions, Go Jetters is responsible.
Alex is not alone in his admiration.
So impressed was the 1887 Mayor of Blackpool, that after a brief visit, he built a pocket sized replica, but only after refusing Gustave Eiffel's offer to dismantle and ship the original for a song.
He could have driven a hard bargain as Eiffel had cash flow problems and expected to have to demolish the tower after 12 months anyway so was in need of a willing buyer to defray his costs.
When we finally got there, Alex was visibly fizzing with excitement.
La Tour quite literally towers over the 7th arrondissement and it is a pretty narrow street that obscures it completely. Even then it peeks out periodically between the buildings and at night the summit casts a rotating shaft of light across the sky like the Eye of Sauron, given the Baz Luhrmann treatment.
As the rain was falling, the queue was mercifully short and we were in the steamed up lift to the first platform in seconds, before spilling out onto the concourse for our first view of the city from a mere 172 feet.
The Tower is dotted with polished silver telescopes that the grateful nation clearly bought in bulk and distributed to the foreshores of every beach resort with a view worth magnifying. They resemble Art Deco machine guns but even without squinting into the eye piece, the view over the Trocadero on one side and the Champs de Mars on the other, demands a moment of your time.
As low cloud scudded across the Paris skyline, the lift to the second platform took us up to 377 feet but this was only ever a temporary distraction from the caged summit at 905 feet.
At the top, the superstructure sways and flexes across its oil tanker dimensions, and as it contracted by rivet popping degrees in the cold, I had visions of a crack team of small, tough, hammer wielding Frenchmen patrolling for errant fixings in a perpetual game of Whac-A-Mole to keep the thing from dismantling itself.
The cage detracts from the view but at the latest count 349 have perished and so it is a sad necessity. However, as with every romantic jumping off point, there have a been a lucky few including one lady who was blown back in by a gust of wind or another whose fall was reputedly broken by a car roof and is anecdotally said to have married the driver.
Like Clare and I, Alex will probably spend the rest of his life dipping in an out of Paris' endless charms.
For him, Go Jetters may soon be a forgotten phase but I suspect that the Eiffel Tower won't.
Comments
Post a Comment