The Eastern Schorr: La Tour Eiffel

I'm sorry that it's taking me two months to post about our trip to Paris.

But here's the best part: I still have some winterish photos from Moscow that I'm going to post. It's all a little unseasonable. But so are flip flops in January, and that never stopped me (well, not until I moved to Moscow).

After some down time at our hotel, we hopped back on the metro and headed west of the Eiffel Tower to Trocadero.

The Trocadero? Le Trocadero?

The Trocadero area of Paris.

Rick Steves recommended this approach for photographs, so I was hoping it would be a little "Rick Steves insider secret".

If it was, then Rick Steves has a lot of insiders.

Thankfully, it was not nearly as crowded as I expect it could be.

But with tourists wandering, local troublemakers coming out for the night, souvenir hawkers approaching relentlessly from every corner, street performers hip hop dancing all over the place, and my obsessive fear of pick pockets (to be fair there were signs - in english - everywhere from the metro to line queues to elevators reminding us to beware of pickpockets), it made photographs a little difficult to focus on.

Not impossible though.

And it was a pretty view, and a nice walk over the Seine.

We grabbed a little dinner before our timed tickets were valid.

And before I go on, I have to mention the tulips. At the time, there was still snow in Moscow. And I wanted to drink the tulips. I wanted to lay in them and roll all around and hug them and keep them with me forever. Did you even know that someone could feel that way about flowers? I bet you didn't even notice them.

Also, the food. Paris is expensive. We were trying to eat on the cheap, but it was impossible to find. I guess cheap is relative. We ate a lot of these sandwiches - meat and cheese on a baguette - that they sold everywhere. They weren't cheap, but at least they were good.

Everything is pretty.

All the food is good.

That should be Paris' slogan.

And this should be their photo.

(actually, I have to be honest. it's my family, but I got the idea from stephmodo. thank you stephmodo!)

So, the timed tickets we bought online were for 6:30pm. I forgot to buy them until about a week before we left. I was hoping to get tickets to the top first thing in the morning. All the morning tickets were sold out. So, I went for the next best thing, evening. It was perfect.

Our tickets were on the elevator to the second floor, and this was our view. So many pretty buildings. Can you spot the Arc de Triomphe?

Here is another view with a little bit of the Champ de Mars and the big, tall Tour Montparnasse. If we had been in the city for more than three days, I would have loved to spend a sunset on the observation level of that skyscraper.

Sticking my camera out through the safety fence.

Imagine waiting in that line at 10:00am.

Our online tickets only got us up to the second level. We had planned on upgrading our tickets at the ticket office on the second level to go all the way to the top, but (my fear of heights kicked in and) we decided to head down to the much less crowded first floor where the kids could follow Gus' trail, learning random facts about the Eiffel Tower...