The Blague from Prague: City of Lines, er ... Lights

Part two in a series of posts on our trip to Paris. Took even more pics than usual as we were visiting friends. Part one here.

We left the Louvre on the metro. By the time we came back to street level, rain was softly falling and we began to question whether now was the time to go up the Parisian icon. Then we got to the Eiffel Tower to learn that the third (and highest) level was closed due to "congestion." Honestly, this was the lowest moment of our trip: we'd already put off the Louvre by a day because of the long, snake-y queue in the courtyard. We'd abandoned our effort to go up the Notre Dame belltower because of the wait and some drizzle. And the patience of our instant-gratification six- and eight-year-olds was thin and cracking.

Here's where our different experiences of Prague and Paris really hit home. Prague has roughly 4.5 million visitors per year, while Paris (a bigger city, to be sure) draws more than 30 million visitors annually. We realized that we just don't have to wait for much in Prague. With kids in tow, that's a bonus. Obviously we've had the luxury of seeing sights during the off-season, but still. We had to face the facts: we now were in the City of Lines.

Eiffel Tower queue

After a little pep talk resulting in a new if-you-can't-beat-the-line-join-it attitude, we queue'd up, loaded the boys with snacks, chatted with other tourists around us, and outlasted the rain. Forty-five minutes later we boarded our elevator to the second level of the tower, with sun rays streaming down around broken clouds.

Southeast-ish view: Parc du Champs-de-Mars, which extends all the way to the 18th-century École Militaire (Military Academy), Napoleon's alma mater.

Ben exhibited signs that he might actually have inherited some of my genetic material (in comparison to the overwhelming evidence that he's Karl's son) when he kept getting a queasy, vertiginous feeling looking straight up the tower.