PARisTrip 3: Eye-filling Eiffel!

The start to the next day was not a great one as we overslept and had to axe “Notre Dame” off our itinerary. No one was keen on a touch-and-run visit to the cathedral, so we decided to devote the rest of our trip (read less than half a day) to Eiffel Tower. So we packed our stuff (or so I thought) and checked out of the hotel to take the metro to Trocadéro. Half an hour later, as we approached the station I felt for my camera & a flash of thoughts made me realize I had left my camera cell batteries (4 of them) and the charger in the hotel room! I couldn’t believe I had committed such a blunder when I had supposedly checked & re-checked to see if I had collected all my belongings before leaving the room. But alas, the charger was plugged in a snug corner & hidden from view, so indeed I had missed picking it up.

Trusting the metro & a slight buffer of time that we had, I decided to dash back to the hotel to pick up the supplies of my camera. One of my colleagues accompanied me and we did manage to get back my batteries & charger but in turn out lost out a precious one hour & our other travel mates. Back to Trocadéro, we caught some sumptuous views of Eiffel Tower & Seine.

Tip: Trocadéro is the best place to shoot pictures with Eiffel Tower as you can capture it in its entirety but do NOT visit this place in the mornings. Sunlight plays spoil sport before noon; late afternoons should be the perfect time to photograph Eiffel from this spot as the sun will not be glaring right in your camera lens at that hour.

The magnitude of “Tour de Eiffel” struck me at its foot. This metal structure, riveted together to form one of the tallest human endeavours in the world, left me speechless as I arched my neck up towards the sky to fit it all into my vision. Like every other place in Paris, it was thronged by huge crowds which I, for once, was not happy to see. Looking at the long queues it was evident we had to abandon the ascent up the tower as we barely had an hour to spare. I was aware paucity of time would make us compromise on a number of things on this trip. However, not being able to climb the Eiffel Tower, hit hardest.

Before leaving to catch our bus, we tried some weird camera shots & watched a hip-hop dance performance by a bunch of ebullient teenagers. We reunited with our colleagues at a connecting station (by chance; we had planned but were unable to find one another at the Eiffel pillars) and reached the bus meeting point on time. As we waited for some females from our tour to finish their Paris shopping, I once again felt frustrated with this whole package tour thing. We moved out of Paris in broad daylight, with me thinking of what all we could have done in this scintillating city if we had another half day at our disposal…