I haven’t been doing  a very good job of posting regularly to my blog but did want to go ahead and get at least one more post out before 2016.  The Eiffel Tower is definitely a site to behold!  The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 World’s Fair; it was not supposed to be a permanent structure.  It was supposed to be demolished in 1909 but was turned into a radio tower and was saved.  It took 300 workers, 18,038 pieces of wrought iron and 2.5 million rivets to build the Eiffel Tower.  When the Eiffel Tower was built, it passed the Washington Monument as the tallest man-made structure.  At 1,063 feet tall, it was the tallest man-made structure until 1930 when the Chrysler Building was built.  During WWII, when Hitler visited Paris, the French cut the lift cables on the Eiffel Tower so that Hitler would have to climb the steps if he wanted to reach the top.  The Eiffel Tower Wikipedia article is worth reading.  The History Channel website also has a good article on the Eiffel Tower.

The first glimpse that I got of the Eiffel Tower as we were walking through the city was magical — it made being in Paris finally feel REAL.  It was neat to walk around the city and be able to see the Eiffel Tower peaking in and out between buildings.

We chose not to go up into the Eiffel Tower while we were in Paris for two reasons — the lines were very long (and our time was limited), and you can’t see the Eiffel Tower if you’re in it.  In order to make the best use of our time we chose to only “see the city from up high” from one place, and that was the towers at Notre Dame, which offered a great view of the Eiffel Tower.  If we had time to go up into another building/structure, we would have gone up into the Montparnasse Tower.

During our short stay in Paris we were able to see the Eiffel Tower against many backgrounds (stormy skies, sunset, night) and from many different perspectives.  Here are some of my favorite Eiffel Tower photographs.

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