Tourists and Eiffel Tower at Champ de Mars, Paris

by Liesl Walsh

Title

Tourists and Eiffel Tower at Champ de Mars, Paris

Artist

Liesl Walsh

Medium

Photograph - Digital Photograph

Description

A couple years ago my husband and I put everything in storage to travel Europe. It was a crazy adventure! We left with no return date or home to come back to. My husband loves to travel, and I love photography. We sailed across the Atlantic and couldn't wait to explore Paris.

We rented an apartment in the Latin Quarter and lived like locals, riding the metro, riding bikes and walking everywhere. We often walked all the way down to the Seine River to Notre Dame. I will never forget the moment we walked across one of the beautiful bridges and saw the Eiffel Tower for the very first time in the distance! Wow!

But we had a problem - how could we get to the tower when the metro was closed between our apartment and the tower? A whole section was shut down. Trying to figure it out was like trying to figure out a jigsaw puzzle - how can we make the connections?

Then we discovered the water taxi! We rode right down the Seine under all those famous bridges. As we got closer to the Eiffel Tower the sheer size was incredible! Bigger than we thought! We walked around Champ de Mars Park and the Trocadero getting many different angles of the tower. This is a view of the tower from the park.

Little did I know it was a rare moment when the Eiffel Tower did not have any construction or special events around it, so I got a clean photo. This ended up being the only day we could get to the tower up close, because Paris ended up getting a lot of rain, and it was the flood of the century while we were there. The Seine River crested at 17 meters, making it impossible for the boats to go under the bridges. And the metro line that went to the Eiffel Tower flooded keeping it closed.

You can read about our adventure in Europe in my husband's book, "Vagabonds in France", by Michael A. Barry. Come with us as we lose our home, put everything in storage, and navigate through Europe for a few months with no return date or home to come back to. Sail across the Atlantic, dodge pickpockets, climb mountains, descend into the Paris Metro, endure nasty weather and illness, witness the flood of the century, and meet some wonderful and not-so-wonderful people. Chuckle with us as we live among the French and try to learn their ways and language. Then make it back home to an empty house we'd never seen before. I illustrated the book with 75 illustrations. The book is available in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NCUNSEK .

The Eiffel Tower is the tallest structure in Paris and one of the most recognizable structures in the world. It was designed and built by the company of Gustave Eiffel, and completed in 1889 as the entrance to the 1889 World's Fair. It sits on the Champ de Mars and overlooks the Seine River across from the Trocadero. In the beginning there was much criticism for the design of the Eiffel Tower, with concern that it would overshadow the other magnificent sights in Paris, but now it is the most visited paid monument in the world with 6.91 million visitors in 2015. The Eiffel Tower is 1,063 feet tall ( 324 metres); the top level's upper platform is 906 feet (276 metres) above ground, making it the highest observation deck for the public in the European Union. During construction pieces of the tower were riveted together in a nearby factory and arrived on site on horse-drawn carts. No drilling or shaping was done on site; if it didn't fit it was sent back for alteration. A total of 18,038 pieces were joined together using 2.5 million rivets. Names of 72 French scientists, engineers, and mathematicians were engraved on the Eiffel Tower to recognize their contributions to the building of the tower. The tower was painted in 3 shades of brown: lighter at the top and getting darker towards the bottom to complement the Parisian sky.

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August 28th, 2016

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