Day 26

Express lane!

We had a sleep in today after our previous late night and then made our way to the Eiffel Tower. We took the metro. Dad managed to get his ticket to not validate on the way out (not the first time, and always tends to be him...). When we got there, there were armed military patrolling, lots of tourist, hawkers, and the largest line ever. It was huge! However, Sandra had bought tickets online earlier so we got to skip the line. Win! Although I’m sure the military had their own special entrance. I’d like to think it was a helicopter...

However, this wicked queue cutting only really got us as far as the second floor. At that point, we had to join everyone else to make it to the top. Fail. The line was so long that people weren’t sure if they were lining up behind the line or just groups of people looking at the view. But no, it was the line...

We finally made it to the top after maybe half an hour of waiting around. With the romantic view of Paris in the background (ignoring all the people around us), I asked Sandra to marry me. She said yes, so yay! After some congratulations from the folks we continued to enjoy the view of Paris. Mum spent a lot of time away from the edge.

We caught the elevator down to the second floor and had another walk around and then took the steps to the first floor. We stopped off at the restaurant on the first floor to get some lunch as it was close to 2. It was decently priced (for a restaurant on the Eiffel Tower) and had a nice view over the Trocadéro.

The view during lunch

The rest of this day was relatively relaxing. We left the Eiffel Tower and walked around the Champs de Mars and then over to Trocadéro before catching the Metro back to the apartment where we spent the rest of th afternoon chilling (and blogging...). Later, the folks went to the Artist’s Square at night. But like I said in China, I’m a bit over the art scene. The rest of the night was spent packing, getting ready for the travel to Venice the next day.