Aah...the Eiffel Tower

Laurie and the new leaning tower of Paris?

It's huge.

The queues were massive, even for the night entry tickets. So we did the thing and were very well behaved sheep. Security was reasonably tight with everything being scanned including us so that was good. It's always on your mind at these iconic venues.

There were two stages to the trip. Whilst it was a clear night it was really windy and when we finally arrived at the top the tower was swaying quite noticeably!. Even if I'd taken a tripod it wouldn't have helped as the whole structure was moving.

Anyway the photos are far from perfect but you get the idea of the height of this thing. Everything else looks like one of those little villages in miniature that you can visit.

Travelling through one of the legs of the tower makes you wonder how many bolts there must be holding it all together. The estimate is 2.5 million!

Thomas Edison and Gustav Eiffel depicted in Eiffel's office at the top of the tower.

The Trocadero and at right the Hotel de Invalides

The Seine - we are so high you can detect the curve of the earth

One really funny thing that happened each time we visited the tower was what happened when the cycle police cruised by. They come every hour or so or when they felt like it. There would be half a dozen of so and they'd just cycle through the crowds.

Now the crowds were made of visitors like us, security staff, food vendors and tower ticket staff etc, Then there are the itinerant souvenir sellers. These guys, (we never saw any girls), set up their 'positions' wherever they felt like it selling generally tacky multi coloured miniature eiffel towers', spongy toys that flatten when they're thrown against the ground then ooze back to their original shape, etc. These items are neatly displayed on a sheet or matting on the ground. At the corners of these mats are looped tapes - the purpose of which was to achieve a hasty getaway from the cycle police

without

loosing any items. This all sounds fine but to see it is hysterical.

The first thing you aware of is a single yell or some sort of signal then a mass of people running like hell for the road.

All of these guys without exception are Sudanese or Nigerian and they run like the wind with the sacks of goods flying out behind them. It was amazing because there are so many vendors and when they all run together everyone just stops in awe at the exodus. Someone will get run over one day as they leap across the road through the traffic. They do not want to get caught. They race down the 30 or 40 steps to the river and wait there until a spotter at the top tells them that the coast is clear - that is the police have gone!

Some must not have permits to live in France as many stayed away for a lot longer than others. We tried to get a video of this but couldn't as it happens just so fast it wasn't possible.

More to come soon....