The Eiffel tower has to be one of the most famous landmarks in Paris if not the world and I can see why. It is completely mesmerizing, particularly at night when it is all lit up. Almost anywhere we were in the city I'd find myself drawn to it.
The first thing we did when we got to Paris was take a tour of the Eiffel Tower which I would highly recommend. If you've been reading along this will not come as a surprise but make sure to do a skip the line tour, there is so much to do and see it's so worth it. The great thing about the tour or our tour guide specifically is that she took us up to the second deck and not only told us about the tower but took us to each side of the tower and explained what we were looking at and interesting things to do later. It really helped us understand how the city was layed out and gave us some places to go and see.
Some of the interesting things she mentioned about the tower (and I don't know if they are all true but since you are now reading it on the internet it must be!) are:
- It was built for the world's fair and was supposed to only be up for twenty years. People hated it and property value around it went down because they did not like it and they were afraid it would fall over on them. Eventually they decided they liked it and made it permanent.
- It was not actually designed by Eiffel but by two people working for him, but since he was the boss and footing the bill he called it whatever he wanted.
- Remarkably no one died building it. One guy went back after work climbed up with a bottle of wine got drunk and fell off and killed himself but that didn't count because it was after work hours.
- The Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas is half the size but took the same amount of time to build, about two years.
- Every hour on the hour at night there is a light show that was supposed to be a temporary thing for the Millennium but they liked it so much they kept, just like the tower itself.
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| The Arc de Triomphe |
