Cliché is a French word.

The above picture was taken from Pont de l’Alma on my last night in Paris, but my favorite place to Tower gaze was directly across the Eiffel Tower on the other side of Pont d’lena.  This is an excerpt from my journal entry from that very spot:

January 29th, 2013 18:19

It was getting dark.  I considered many times hopping on a metro & accepting that I’ve done everything on my Paris To Do list (which actually exists on my iPhone), but once I was honest with myself, I knew I had missed one thing – the Eiffel Tower at night.  I decided to walk up St. Germaine & eventually along the Seine until I hit the Eiffel Tower.  There was this weird congregation of Police buses, yes buses, by l’Assemblee Nationale trying to scare me away from my proposed route to the Tower.  I kept on.  I [was walking down the street parallel to the river and] realized being on the side of the buildings was hindering my view of the tower.  I made it to the other side & it was top of the Tower I could see… picturesque.  I took out my camera & right as I positioned it upward and powered it on, it struck 6pm — the top of the hour when the tower lights up.  ”Ah, merci.”  Thank you to all the wrong turns I made.  Thank you to the city of Paris.  Thank you to my higher being always guiding me.  I walked on, took advantage of photo opportunities, changed my phone’s wallpaper & ended up here.  I hear the fountain water flowing, cars & buses exhilarating, scooters rumbling, the carousel singing, horns honking, and faintly the wind blowing.  The Eiffel Tower is in front of me alive with lights.  It’s practically moving as the clouds ‘stay in place’ behind it.  The elevators go up and down.  The search lights encircle the city.  The bottom arc of the Tower grazes the top of the city’s ‘tallest’ building.  It symbolizes so much more than a piece of architecture.  It’s Paris.  It’s love.  It’s history.  It’s art.  It’s the 1900s.  It’s light.  It’s iconic.  It is the sun, the beginning & the end of my trip to Paris.  It’s always pointing up & it never ends.

It stopped raining.  Five minutes until the next top of the hour.  I think I can stick around a bit more.  The clouds look like stage props every time the search lights hit them…

[immediately after the hourly light show]

At first I tried taking pictures, but it was not doing the beauty of the sight any justice.  It made the tower look yellow, but it’s definitely orange.  I kept crossing my eyes which made it more easy to follow the light.  I think I would’ve been able to count the light [bulbs].  It made it look like a cartoon almost.  Then, I thought about how Disney is the only entity capable of creating magic like this.  At one point, I felt a gust of wind literally shake me.  Had I ever been this still?… I could swear the lights twinkled faster as it was about to end.  When I focused on the lights, I saw the unmistakable outlines of the Eiffel Tower.  It was no more pieces of steal, just the iconic outline.  The Eiffel Tower is allowed to be as cliche as it wants to be.  Bravo, Monsieur Eiffel!  Bravo.

About these ads