After spending a little while outside the Louvre, the five of us (Delle, Dotti, Lachy, Ben and I) set off back to Notre Dame Cathedral to catch the 9:30pm "building of Notre Dame" video that we would be allowed inside to see. We walked past a lake that reflected the setting sun beautifully and that was surrounded by cuddling couples on BYO chairs, and then walked through the middle of what seemed to be a semi-permanent fun fair - see photo of rides below!
Back at Notre Dame, we sat in the pews inside the grand old cathedral and watched a video about the building of it projected onto a large screen up the front. The dialogue was in French but luckily there were English subtitles!
At 9:30pm, a family we'd been hoping to catch up with all day finally arrived and slid into the pews next to us - Ron and Keryn F and their teenage kids Luke and Laura! They are from Orange, NSW, but were travelling through Europe for a month or two. We had met up with them at convention in Germany, and discovered we would all be in Paris on Tuesday. We'd been intending to spend most of the day together, but after a number of hold-ups on their end, and text message delays etc, they finally found us about 12 hours later! After the video ended, we enjoyed catching up with them outside Notre Dame and hearing all about the snails they'd eaten for tea...
Later on, we all decided to catch the 11pm twinkling of the Eiffel Tower. What happens is that the Tower is lit up by coloured flood lights all night, but for 10 minutes on every hour, from nightfall until 1am in winter or 2am in summer, the entire tower "twinkles"! We'd only found out about it that morning in a brochure about the Tower, and were all very keen to see it. (Click here for an interesting site I found about the history of illuminating the Eiffel Tower.)
So, the nine of us took the metro to the station we thought was closest to the Eiffel Tower, and set off at a brisk pace in the direction that felt right. (Perhaps you can already tell where this story is going... :P) By a few minutes to 11, we still couldn't see the Tower above any of the tall buildings around us, and finally realised we needed to be running in the complete opposite direction. So, about turn, and off we went again!
As it approached 11:10pm, when the Tower would stop sparkling, the nine of us were running through the streets of Paris, dodging traffic, wildly gazing upwards in the hope of glimpsing a magical sparkling tower, and spread about a block apart, with the speediest ones (Lachy and Luke) well ahead of the rest!
Just in time, we saw in the distance the tip of the Tower above the skyline... yes, the top few metres of the Eiffel Tower, which was floodlit blue that night, lined with sparkling silver dots of light... it was beautiful!! :) Beams of blue light also moved across the night sky, coming from the top of the Tower (it was these that helped me spot the Tower in the first place).
So, exhausted but happy, we tucked into some Häagen-Dazs and then wandered back through the streets to the Eiffel Tower in a more leisurely and restrained manner.
We arrived at the far end of the long skinny park (Champ de Mars) that leads to the Tower, and Dotti, Lachy, Ben and I set up camp on a small gazebo-type platform directly in line with the Tower but a couple hundred metres away from it. Meanwhile, Delle wandered closer to the Tower with Ron, Keryn, Luke and Laura.
It was a beautiful evening and I must say that sitting in that park, gazing at the blue Eiffel Tower and its mesmerising beams of blue light slowly criss-crossing the night sky, was one of the highlights of the whole trip for me. I had by then spent two full days sightseeing in Paris (one in 2006, and then this day), but it was Paris at night that I finally fell in love with. We had fun taking photos and playing with time exposures, as you can see below!
After a while of this blissful relaxation, it came to our attention that poor Delle was having a slightly less relaxing time, trying to call each of us in turn and our phones all ringing out (still on silent from being inside Notre Dame!). She was near the base of the Tower and the others she was with were wanting to head for their hotel, and Delle had no idea where to find us!! Eventually she got through to us and found her way back - we hadn't moved more than 10 metres from where we'd parted ways anyway!
By this time it was almost midnight so we were thrilled to realise we would get to see the Tower twinkling properly - the full height of it rather than just the tip, and from the most ideal viewing situation imaginable! It was incredible! I took a brief video of it (see below) just to show you all! :) Hope you enjoy it - the real thing is absolutely beautiful...
Afterwards, we wandered up to the base of the Tower and searched for some loos, but they were all closed. (This fact actually came in incredibly handy some hours later, but I'll get to that in the NEXT entry!!) Check out the photo below showing the flood lights shining on one of the Tower's legs!
After taking the metro part of the way back to where we'd left our car at Le Defence, we popped up above ground for a look at the famous Arc de Triomphe. This is a "triumphal arch" monument to honour those who fought for France, and it is in the centre of a roundabout that is about 10 lanes wide but with no lane markings. The roundabout is at the western end of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées (the most expensive strip of real estate in Europe) and is apparently insane during the day, but was reasonably quiet when we were there, given that it was 1am in the morning!!
Anyway, I would say "and that was the end of our day in Paris, so bye for now"... if it were true! However, that's far from the case, so I'll just say "there's so much more to our day in Paris that I need to write it in a whole separate blog entry, so bye for now"!!! :)
1 comment:
LOVE the entry!!! and am just about to dive into the carpark adventure...VERY excited :D
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