Eiffel Tower and aurevoir Paris!

Hi all,

Today was the one day that said rain on the weather forecast for my entire visit in Paris. We set off for the metro and caught the purple line 14 stops to the Champ de Mars. Here we walked together and then sat for a while. Nan loved the Eiffel Tower, and the three of us sat on a bench and reflected that we could envisage her and Pa sitting on the same bench looking at the tower on one of their visits too. We were lucky, at this point it wasn’t really raining. So we were able to enjoy our walk through the park to our tour meeting point. I had also brought a cardboard cut out of Nan with me which we took a photo with. I made this in March 2020 when Mum, Dad and I were supposed to go to Japan, which never happened due to the pandemic beginning. I had told Nan I would take it to Japan one day so she had a photo there. Seeing how much she loved Paris, it felt like I should do it here too!

Robyn and I then joined a tour to ascend the Eiffel Tower. When we looked at tickets to the summit a month out, they were already booked out. Apparently Paris is back to pre-pandemic summer visitor numbers this summer. So we had to book a tour to go to the top. I’m fortunate enough to have now gone up the tower four times. Robyn had been up once before to the second level with Ian, but not to the top as Ian doesn’t like heights.

The Eiffel Tower took two years to build and was completed in 1889. It was built for the World’s Fair like a number of other places we have visited. The year that it was completed in was symbolic as it was the 100th anniversary of the revolution. The third republic at the time wanted to show equality and an even playing field, so ran a competition to design a tower for anyone to enter. It had three requirements – must be 300m tall, made of iron and easy to disassemble. 120 submissions were made (including a 300 m tall guillotine and a 300 m tall elephant!), but the competition was rigged really because Gustavo Eiffel was quite rich, and already had a reputation due to building the iron interior of the Statue of Liberty. So needless to say, he won.

The agreement with the tower was that Gustave Eiffel had to fund it himself, but he had a 20 year lease on the tower and its profits. He had to take out a loan at the time to build the tower, which is estimated by today’s standards to have been €35 million ($53 million Australian). The loan was for 20 years, but so many people ascended the tower during the six months of the World’s Fair that he had already paid off the loan within that time, and became very rich from all the visitors from that point on!! Back then, in the six months of the World’s Fair, 2 million people went up the tower. Today, approximately 3.5 million visitors go up the tower per six months. Considering the population of the world is eight times what it was back then today, it was a pretty amazing number of visitors for the time.

The third requirement, “easy to disassemble”, thankfully never came into play. In 1898, the tower was used to send a radio signal 4 km away, and did so successfully. It was then put forward to the government that a larger antenna be placed on top, so that signals could be sent further, and thus that the tower remain instead of be disassembled in 1910. This larger antenna went ahead and proved beneficial, able to send and receive messages from 6000 km away, and intercepting many German messages during World War I. Once when the Germans tried to take the tower during the war, the French cut the lift cables, so that to ascend the Germans would have to climb 1665 stairs instead.

Today, the tower stands as an iconic symbol of Paris. It is constructed from over 18,000 pieces of iron and 2.5 million rivets. It has the names of 72 contemporaries of Gustave Eiffel around its first level, including engineers, mathematics, public figures and more. Its 2.5 million square metres of surface area are painted every seven years with 60 tonnes of a  specific coloured paint called “Eiffel Tower Brown”, which takes a team of 25 people 15 months to do. Due to Covid and lockdown delays, this process and pre Olympic spruce up is occurring now, and for the first time ever this is going on during high season. As a result there was a lot of scaffolding underneath the tower. It was actually quite interesting to see how it all worked. The paint they use apparently has a special ingredient that makes it easy to absorb and reflect light, so that the tower can be lit up any colour very easily.

So as you can see, it was worth being on the tour to learn a few facts about the tower. And as it turned out, these kept us entertained while we waited to ascend. The workers union for the tower decided to hold a meeting this morning and keep us waiting an extra hour to go up. The rain got heavier during this time but we waited patiently and Robyn and I were both glad we had brought our coats.

We boarded the funicular to level two. These funiculars were created by the American Otis brothers, who had to start up a branch in France and employ French people in order to be allowed to create things for the World’s Fair. They use hydraulic pumps, and the original pumps are still in place from 1889 which is pretty amazing. Then had a quick tour around with our guide Maarten. We learned briefly from him about Georges-Eugene Haussman, who was commissioned by Napoleon to bring air and light to the city centre in Paris in the 1850s. This sounded great in practice, but involved the demolition of many medieval neighbourhoods due to poor conditions and overcrowding to make way for the gorgeous wide avenues, parks and squares we know today. Montmartre was an after thought and was created in 1866, which is why its streets are quite different to the rest of Paris. We also learned that the hideous Montparnasse tower at the end of the Champ de Mars was built in the 1960s to try and revive the area. Typically the French love symmetry, but everyone found this building so ugly that the didn’t build the second one in the end. As a result, a law was made that no building are allowed to be higher than the typical Parisian buildings within the city of Paris. So Paris has that one ugly building to thank for the fact that it doesn’t have any others, and its CBD is further out. I am jealous – we are ruining Melbourne with all the putrid soulless apartment towers we are building.

Maarten was great, but due to the initial delay we were becoming a bit nervous due to me having a train to catch later, so we left a little early and went to the summit together. Despite the rain and clouds, we had fairly good visibility, and had a quick look around before heading back down. I’m not even scared of heights but I felt a little weird as we approached the top – Ian made the right call as he would have hated it!

We met back up with Ian and headed back to the metro and then the apartment. On the way back, we each bought a delicious sandwich and cake from the local boulangerie. I am really going to miss the bakeries in Paris, it’s impossible to buy something bad from them. We enjoyed these back in the apartment and then I packed up and walked to the metro where I caught the train to the Gare du Nord to catch the Eurostar to London. Brexit has a lot to answer for, the queues were huge and despite leaving plenty of time I only made my train by 20 minutes after clearing passport control etc. I am so close to my goal of filling my passport – I now have one full page and two half pages left. The French guy flicked through 36 pages before finding an empty one and looked at me like “seriously?!”. Oops!

I’m now sitting comfortably on the Eurostar, thinking about how much I love train travel in Europe. I’ve missed it! I have had a fabulous five days in Paris with Ian and Robyn. It was fantastic spending some time with them and seeing and doing some fun Parisian things together. Wandering around in the sun at leisure and not feeling any pressure to rush to and from places was great as well. Since the 276458234 lockdowns in Melbourne ended, I haven’t felt like myself as much. Work has been hard with the impact of the lockdowns on the kids being so clear, and being the person putting supports in place for them. The few days I have had in Paris have been truly soul restoring.

I am now en route to London, visiting for the first time since my year living there in 2015. I am staying with my friends Alisha and Shannon. I haven’t seen Alisha since the end of 2016 when we went to New York with Shannon and Jess, and I haven’t seen Shannon since he visited Melbourne on Christmas Day in 2017. There will be tears tonight when we are reunited finally! I attempted two trips over the last two years which of course were cancelled, and Alisha is now pregnant and due in November. It’s going to be so special seeing them and spending some time together, and revisiting some of my favourite places in London too.

Love to all,
Claire
Xoxox

 

 

 

 

Champs-Élysées, Jardin des Tuileries, Musée de l'Orangerie and the Arc de Triomphe

Hello all,

I slept fairly well last night and set off at 8.30am today. I caught the train over to the Arc de Triomphe to begin my walk down the Champs Élysées. I made my way down and stopped at Ladurée, famous for their macarons. I bought a box of 12 to enjoy and share once home and later found out that Dad bought me some from the exact same place when he was here in 2012 with Adam!

As I continued, I enjoyed seeing the facade of the Petit Palace and the gardens surrounding it. The adjacent Grand Palace is being restored for the Olympics and is mostly covered up. I also saw lots of temporary seating being set up - I’m assuming for the Tour d’France?

Then I arrived at the Jardin des Tuileries. Laid out in its present form in 1664, back then it was made for promenading. Today it was filled with picnickers and people relaxing in the sun on chairs by the fountain. I chose to do the latter for a while before walking to a post office to post a card to Pa. Then I did the former, I bought a fromage et jambon sandwich (which I ordered in French and the lady understood me - win!) and sat eating it by the fountain. It was glorious in the sun. The great weather this week has truly been soul restoring, a much needed break from the dark and coke back in Melbourne.

At 12 noon I had a booking at the Musée de l’Orangerie. Opened in 1852, the reason I wanted to go here was Monet’s water lilies. Housed in two purpose built rooms filled with natural light, Monet’s eight huge water lily paintings were magnificent. I had one of those moments where you round the corner and say “wow!” out loud. These paintings were so big (1.97 m tall, and collectively nearly 100 m long) that Monet had to paint them in sections. In the warmer months, he could paint outside using full scale studies in front of him. In the cooler months, he would continue painting in his studio and have to rely on his memory.

The Musée de l’Orangerie was chosen to house the paintings because of the fact the building is between the river and the gardens, which seemed suitable considering the paintings are of water lilies. Monet painted them in 1915, and in 1918 donated them to France as a gift of peace when World War I ended. In 1927 when he died, they were put on public display at his request.

I did two laps of the two oval rooms. The first, I took some photos. I asked a Japanese girl to take my photo and she took about 25 at all different angles – I felt like I was in a photo shoot! Her and her friends were very friendly. They then took a photo for a lady and her little girl, and the little girl felt so comfortable with them that she pulled out a book of drawings she had done to show them. It was very cute. On my second lap I soaked it all in with my eyes, trying to imprint the pinks, blues, purples and greens into my memory. Monet is one of my favourites and it was a real treat seeing these. I only realised that’s where they were when I rewatched ‘Midnight in Paris’, as they visit the museum. In 2015, I went to Giverny and visited Monet's house and garden which was incredible. It was great going to see these paintings today and piecing it all together.

I didn’t look at any other paintings in the museum, as I went to meet Ian and Robyn at the apartment at 1.30pm as they returned from Chartres. The light show they saw there looked amazing. We had a rest and then the three of us set off to ascend the Arc de Triomphe. The customer service here was great. I had prebooked us tickets, and they let us use a lift as Robyn’s leg and Ian’s back are quite sore once they have walked a bit each day. We still had to walk a few steps but not many. The view at the top was more than worth it. Sunny and beautiful, you could see for miles. We spotted Sacre Couer, the Palais Garnier (Opera House), Pantheon, Pere Lachaise Cemetery and of course the Eiffel Tower. In the other direction, we could see the more modern looking CBD area.

We walked a down the Champs Élysées together for a while, and then Ian and Robyn had a coffee while I headed off to look at some shops. I came away empty handed, not a fan of many of the summer fashion trends going on at the moment. But it was interesting looking anyway!

We had another rest and then headed out for dinner at a restaurant Ian’s friend recommended. I had beef bourguignon with pasta, Robyn a Caesar salad and Ian a steak. We then enjoyed a gelato at the same place I visited yesterday, which we sat and ate opposite Notre Dame while listening to some live music. We then caught the metro home.

Love to all,
Claire
Xoxox