Take me to the top

Nico has given me directions for the best way to get to the Eiffel tower which involves catching a tram and then a couple of metros but I still manage to get off 20 minutes walk away and it's pretty cold. When I arrive they're is a queue for the elevator probably a mile long but I decide the ascent by foot maybe a bit much for my dodgy ankle, so I join it. The cost is 29 euros but because it's so windy the summit is closed so they reduce the rate to 20euros. The view is amazing you can literally see the whole of Paris. I take an hour to walk around and enjoy the view and descend down the 6000 stairs. The tower is over 130 years old and was only meant to stay erected for 20 years but here it is still standing at 330ft tall. They paint the tower by hand with a special paint that preserves the iron that it's built with and as we are here we spot some of the workers taking on this monumental task.
I head down a back street on my walk to the Arc de triumph and stop in a beautiful cafe for lunch. In Paris it is much cheaper to eat big at lunch with a starter main and pudding offered at around £21 but that's too much for me on my own so I order the goats cheese and honey pizza. I've managed to purchase an adapter to charge my phone and ask the waiter to charge it for me, which he very kindly does. I walk a little bit further and when I approach the Arc de triumph there is some sort of ceremony going on. At the base of the Arch de Triomphe stands a torch. Every evening at 6:30 P.M. it is rekindled, and veterans lay wreaths decorated with red, white and blue near its flickering flame. It burns in the darkness to recall the sacrifice of an unknown French soldier who gave his life during World War I. The other lovely thing is different groups of cadets go to pay their respects and are chosen to lay flowers nice to see the young encouraged to respect history. I am supposed to meet Nico tonight but I'm exhausted and he has a headache so I take the tube home with the other half of my pizza and get an early-ish night.Read more