The Tour Eiffel at Night with Chris and Karolis

It is high season in Paris and the crowds are horrific (over 225 million tourists a year visit this Tower) so going up to the top of the Tour Eiffel during the day is not my cup of tea and I wouldn't impose it on Christopher and Karolis. I absolutely will not wait in line for hours at any tourist spot anywhere in the world. So we went at night. 

It is about a 20 minute walk from my apartment and very easy to get to. We left the apartment after 11:00 pm and got there when there was still a lot of activity in the Champs de Mars. The kids come down and picnic during the evening and it is wild. I think "get s**t faced" is a better expression than 'picnic'. There is a great picture below of the Champ du Mars taken from the second Observation deck ... it is close to 1:00 am for this picture and there are still lots of kids partying below.

The Champ de Mars (Field of Mars) is a large public greenspace in Paris located between the Eiffel Tower  and the École Militaire. The park is named after the Campus Martius ("Mars Field") in Rome, a tribute to the Roman god of war. The name also alludes to the fact that the lawns here were formerly used as drilling and marching grounds by the French military.

The boys liked the party on the lawn but we had a mission to get to the top of the Tour Eiffel. Discovered that the upper deck closes at 10:00 pm but we did go up to the second deck after a 5 minute wait at most. The second deck at night is more than adequate for a wonderful view. Karolis loves heights so he really liked this part of the day.

An even better reason to go up at night than to avoid the crowds is to enjoy the tower's nighttime ambience. After dark, the entire tower is cloaked in the warm glow of 336 light projectors and 20,000 sparkling strobe lights. And from the tower's observation decks, you can enjoy cool evening breezes as you view floodlit bridges, churches, and other landmarks in the glittering Parisian lightscape.

The tower took two years to construct and was opened for the 'World Fair' in 1889. It cost 7.8 million francs to build and the cost was very controversial at the time since the Tower has no useful function like those built today. But it brought in 5.9 million francs just with entrance fees at the Fair so this quieted Parisians down a bit. It is 1,665 steps to the top but we did NOT walk up we took the elevator.

You can also see why they call Paris the 'City of Lights' when you observe from high. The main tourist attractions are in particular lit up at night and quite dramatic. I'm coming back with some of my other guest but next time I'm going to bring my tripod. I used a high ISO on my camera which helps but I can get MUCH better shots than these ... trust me.

We stayed right up until they kicked us out at about 1:00 in the morning. Home by 1:30 to bed. I let these kids sleep in Saturday morning but I plan to walk their asses off today. There is a 'LGBT' parade on Saturday that is suppose to draw a million people into the streets of Paris so I'm going to take them over there and walk and watch part of the parade with them. It starts at Bienvenue Montparnasse which is only five minutes from our apartment ... 10 at most.

Life if good ... enjoy

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