Eiffel Tower

We planned it to be in Paris for Valentine's Day and the last activity on the last day of our 19 day trip was to have a Valentine's Day dinner at Altitude 95, one of the restaurants on the Eiffel Tower.

We arrived via Metro and got off at the Trocadero stop, the best stop if you plan on visiting the Eiffel Tower. You exit the stop and go around a building and there is the Eiffel Tower in front of you. Right there is a platform on a hill with an unobstructed view. There is no better vantage point to view the tower.

We got there just as the tower stopped "sparkling" and we wanted pictures of the sparkling so we stood there in the cold waiting for the next time. It seemed that no local person knew how often the tower "sparkles". One woman even said "The Eiffel Tower is only for tourists" and said she didn't know anything about the schedule. We did find out eventually that the tower has the light show every hour on the hour starting at sunset. We don't know what time it ends.

We then went up to the "1st floor" to have our dinner at Altitude 95. It's a nice restaurant with awesome food. The dessert even had gold leaf on it. It was a "special price" for Valentine's Day but how often do we get to Paris? You have to do it. It appears that most of the diners were Americans, even the table next to ours had a couple also from Chicago.

After dinner we wanted to go to very the top but it's kind of a pain since you need to buy a separate ticket for each stop from a kiosk. We ended up only making it to the "2nd floor" and decided that because it was so dark and cold that we didn't need to bother going all the way up.

It was a great way to cap off the trip.

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Video available: A short video clip of the Eiffel Tower doing the light show/sparkle thing. (48 seconds) 256Kbps Broadband RealVideo Stream