Day 1: Welcome to Paris
Eiffel Tower; 10/19/25
I arrived in Paris the day before the tour start on Sunday - I do not sleep on planes (turbulence on this flight did not help...), the highlight of Saturday was managing to take the train to my hotel for the night, followed by wandering a park until my room was ready and successfully buying dinner at a grocery store (travel tip: the store I went to had self-checkouts, and I could switch to English, which was very helpful for someone who does not do well with understanding spoken words in any language when jet-lagged...). So - the trip really started on Sunday.
First Stop: Eiffel Tower
Sunday morning I woke up early, had my first breakfast of amazing pastry and then made my way to the tour hotel to drop off my bags before my reservations for the Eiffel Tower. Despite being "not great with heights" and a bit claustrophobic (especially in crowds of people), the Eiffel Tower was always on my list to add to the official tour stops. So, less than 24 hours after arriving in Paris, I was standing on top of the Eiffel Tower, looking out over Paris with a flute of champagne - and listening to sirens that I'm assuming were related to the jewel heist at the Louvre that had occurred shortly before.
For anyone concerned about heights or tiny elevators, I will say that I found the trip to the top of the tower to be entirely worth it and didn't cause any undue anxiety. I will admit that it looks really skinny and pointy at the top, but it's actually a relatively large area and the structure feels more like a secure building than a "tower".
One thing that struck me about the construction of the tower itself was that, as substantial as it is, there are beautiful design elements around the arches and the construction itself appears almost delicate and lace-like when looking up at it rising above you.
Also, the Eiffel Tower was one of the locations that were in my box of slides. This was the first test of trying to retake the photos - with the differences in technology becoming clear rather quickly.
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Arc de Triomphe over my shoulder from the Eiffel Tower. It was only after I got home that I realized that I had taken a photo of myself from about the same location that my grandfather took his photo - I'm going to blame the jet lag for that one... as many before him and since, my grandfather had a lot of photos from and of the tower. It's actually kind of amazing how Paris hasn't changed that much from the nearly 1000 foot view.
After descending back to solid ground (I said I was OK with the height - that doesn't mean that I wasn't very happy to be back on terra firma) , I crossed the Seine to take the photo that had inspired me to even try this in the first place.
Seeing the photo of the Eiffel Tower from the plaza above the Jardins de Trocadéro, with the vintage vehicles inspired me to even try this in the first place - I remember seeing this slide in the nostalgic slide shows as a kid. But experience also made it clear that, as much as Paris looked the same from above, aside from the occasional new building, the reality on the ground was different.
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This was both fascinating and bittersweet moment - trying to get the view of the tower framed by the buildings was challenging. It took me a bit to figure out that they'd moved the traffic lanes further from the buildings/plaza, so cars weren't going to happen (again...jet lag...) and, looking at the photo and discussing with my colleagues who all "read" buildings, they've clearly added a couple of steps, so the ground surface relative to the plaza made it impossible to line up exactly. But most dramatic is the increase in the number of people that truly illustrates the changes in volume of tourism in the nearly 70 years between the photos. In fact, I'm not even sure that the few individuals in the 1950s photo are tourists (while I'm pretty sure that the vast majority in the photo to the left are). It makes me wish I could travel back in time.
And then, after a quick stop at a boulangerie for lunch it was off to the Hôtel de Londres Eiffel where my luggage (see belowfor proof that I was able to pack for Paris, complete with clothes I would wear for a nice evening out, with just a carry-on) was already in my cozy top floor room and meet our guide Rolinka and the rest of my tour group for our welcome dinner.
