Paris by Night

Saturday 29 May 1999. Our day comes to an end after a somewhat exhausting day both in 1999 and several exhausting days in 2023 writing these articles!

The coach took us on a tour of Paris by night, although by this time it was not yet dark and as the drivers had to be up early to take us to Versailles on the following morning, most of the tour would be taken during twilight until the last stop which was a sight to remember. But there's other things to see first, including this - the Arc de Triomph. Now if anyone considers themselves to be a good driver, the place to test that must surely be the Place Charles-de-Gaulle at the top of the Champs-Elysée, where the Arc de Triomphe sits on an island amidst a maelstrom of whirling traffic and blaring horns. This is a roundabout with twelve(!) roads leading to it and where right of way belongs to those joining the roundabout, not leaving it! We were to go into the monument, but a scribbled notice informed us that the monument was "on strike"... We are looking at one of the side arches - the main archway is above us and behind us another arch like this. On the inside face, on the left, are the names of all Napolean's generals.

Through the massive arch someone flew a biplane in 1919, not the type of deed that the city would like to encourage and, apart from the obvious safety considerations, here is the reason why. Underneath the arch lies the French grave of the Unknown Soldier, laid here after the Great War in 1920. An eternal flame was lit in 1923 and is ceremoniously rekindled every night. In 1962 someone was arrested for frying eggs over it. Imagine if someone did that over our equivalent in Westminster Abbey... When we were there, gun-carrying sentries were posted on either side of the grave.

Although it was starting to go dark, the floodlights had not yet lit which was a shame. The lights are automatically controlled by a sensor that measures how dark it is. They came on just as the coach pulled away...

Before I got on the coach, I took this photo of the Champs-Elysée from the monument. The boulevard is lined with trees and many of the buildings have roof gardens. I must have caught a quiet moment in the traffic here as normally you would not have seen the street at all for the merry-go-round of Renaults, Citroens and Peugots!

By the time we arrived at the Eiffel Tower it had gone fully dark, affording a wonderful view of the tower from the terraces of the Palais de Chaillot. When first built the tower was the highest building in the world - only made practical by the invention of the lift ("elevator" for my American readers). 10,000 tons of iron were used and, because of expansion, the tower can grow by as much as 6 inches on a hot day! On the front of the tower, the display shows the number of days left to the new Millenium.

The terraces of the Palais de Chaillot were full of souvenir stalls, trinkets and baubles laid out for sale on rugs, hawkers demonstrating toy aeroplanes and stalls selling food and drink. The place was crowded and I had to pick my moment to get to the front of the terrace wall to be able to see the ponds and fountains below.

Back on the coach, we set off back towards Bougival and our hotel. Duh - there's that song again... Ain't no doubt we are here to party, (Boogie nights) Come on now got to get it started. Dance with the boogie get down. Cos boogie nights are always the best in town - As we made our way through the streets, the pavement cafes were still doing a brisk trade.

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The Eiffel Tower

Saturday 29 May 1999. A smaller page than some of the others, but I felt that the one main symbol of Paris should have a page all to itself! We are having a look at the Eiffel Tower prior to having a bit of time to ourselves to wander around or just sit at a cafe table watching the world go by.

The paintwork was duller than I expected - though why I should have expected a "sparkling" tower I have no idea! But the tower does not disappoint at all, though sadly there was no time to go up to admire the view from the viewing platforms.

The weather was scorching and the roses in the flower beds added a dramatic touch of red to the photo above, though there was no way of having both roses and an uninterrupted view of the tower.

I was by now sporting a baseball cap with 'Paris' emblazoned on it, bought from one of the kiosks along the banks of the River Seine. Otherwise the old bald head would have been glowing enough to confuse drivers at night...

Ok, time for a bit about the tower itself! Twice as high as Blackpool's but without the house of fun at the bottom - 'Nowt to take brass' (Nothing to take money) is how the Blackpool owners thought of the french inspiration for their own tower - it was designed by Gustav Eiffel for the World's Fair of 1889. The structure appalled many Parisians and there were protests against it. But for it being such as success as a platform for a radio antenna it would have been demolished in 1909.

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Disneyland Paris Trip, 2008 Index Page

A series of articles on a rather wet and cold visit to Paris in January (what were we thinking?) of 2008. No Disney characters were drowned... We also have a day in Paris itself.

Clicking or tapping the photos below will take you to the relevant article. Perhaps wear something waterproof and warm? A link at the end of each article will bring you back here.

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Up the Eiffel Tower

31 January 2008. We arrived at the foot of the Eiffel Tower and joined a small queue that was zig-zagging along the railings towards the ticket office.

The ticket office was having no problem at all keeping up with the queue for the lifts. A large party in front had pre-booked so were ignoring it so I nipped up the few steps and on seeing me do so, the Italian couple who had been in front of us decided they too needed tickets.

I waved them forward, past me and he stammered "Gratzi! ...er... merci!" so I showed off a bit of multi-lingual skill.
"Prego!" I grinned and they laughed and then again as I spoke in English to Fran. The large party were climbing the stairs, which meant single file, so we hadn't long to wait for the lift. We piled in and set off upwards.

Unfortunately the Eiffel Tower was only open to the second level which meant we couldn't go all the way to the top. But even the second level is 115.75 metres (about 375 feet so not as high as Blackpool Tower!) High enough for superb views though. And with the brilliant sunshine we made the most of it, picking out the landmark sites. Sacré-Coeur was easy to spot on its hill on the horizon.

The golden dome of Les Invalides also was easy to spot and when I swapped my camera lens for the telephoto was stunningly impressive.

It took us quite a while and gave us a bit of fun before we managed to spot the Arc de Triomphe. This was to be our next destination after leaving the Tower and I wanted to walk from there down the straight line along the Champs-Elysée through Le Jardin des Tuileries down through the smaller Arc de Triomphe du Carousel to Le Louvre, the famous museum that houses the art collection including the Mona Lisa.

Before we do that walk, however, let's have a look from our high viewpoint. The bridge with the golden dragons on their high pedestals is St Michael's bridge and looking straight down we can watch over people walking in the park at the tower's foot.

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Heading Into Paris

Thursday 31st January 2008 dawned cold and frosty. I sneaked a look out of the hotel window and shivered.

We had decided to have a day in Paris itself and, given that we had already spent a day in the Disney Studios and another in the Disneyland Park itself and given further that it was our last full day in France, there was no choice but to pull on the woolly hat which had tried all of its own accord to emulate Mickey's ears all week.

We started off by catching the free shuttle to the Disney Village and railway station. Then in mine bestest French I managed to secure day passes for the trains to include the metro and buses in Paris. These are called Mobilis tickets although it's a different ticket for a two-day pass. The train terminates at Marne la Vallée station, so it came in one way, we got on, and it left again in the direction it had come from. We swapped seats to face forward and settled down. As we stopped at the various stations the train started to fill up. A young woman sat opposite us and pulled out a Nintendo DS and that kept her happy for a full half hour until she got off. "If you'd have brought yours, you could have linked!" I said to Fran.

We went around 17 stations to Charles de Gaulle Étoile where we swapped to another line and headed for the Eiffel Tower. We got on the Metro train, where I saw a poster and my French was just about enough to realise the station we wanted was closed. We had to go past it to the next one and then walk back. It was cold, but very sunny and so it wasn't an unpleasant walk. It took us around 15 minutes to get to the Tower that we had decided we were going to go up! And so we shall - in the next article!