We were up early after the birthday celebrations of yesterday. Whilst we were in France in September I had secretly booked tickets (using the lifts) too the top of the Eiffel Tower as we had missed out during our visit to Paris many years ago as just as we had arrived, the go rolled in and we could not even see the Tower so no point in going up it!
I also booked first class tickets on the train - upstairs to Paris. After a brief confusion with the seats - thank you to the very patient French woman who explained where we should be - we were off. The landscape was not that interesting on route but it is always fun to use the local transport when visiting a city. The sunshine held.
We arrived in Paris and made our away across the city to the Eiffel Tower and it was at that point it started to get a bit grey. We found a food stand near the bottom of the Tower for a light lunch and it started to get chilly and then the rain started. Despite having fast track tickets straight to the top, we had to queue for ages in a very disorganised wait during which none of the officials seemed to have any real idea of where we should go. The rain continued, we got wet and the queues were long. Eventually we reached the first of the lifts which we were crammed into.
Things started to improve as we progressed up the lifts and amazingly as we stepped out at the very top of the Tower the sun came out and we were able to spend as long as we wanted photographing the views. I like this photo as it shows the city spreading out below us, with the shadow of the Eiffel Tower in sight. After a lot of photos we made our way back down and crossed ‘La Seine’ to the North bank and found a cafe before we made out way back and. Enjoyed a large rather nice hot chocolate. We were flagging and tiring by the time we found our first class upstairs seats for the train journey back to Lille.
We were quite peckish by this time but were very lucky to get a seat in a Flemish restaurant we had spotted a day or so ago in the old town. Unlike last night, the menu and food was excellent and despite feeling shattered, it was a great day.
