Chapter One.Five: At the Eiffel Tower

Rounding a couple of street corners from the public scene, we chanced upon the monument of steel that has now become the face of Paris on any travel brochure or Bollywood flick. People were roller blading and jogging around on that calm May day. Families were smiling their brilliant smiles which were in turn being captured by the multitudinous point and shooters.

The monument is perfect in its symmetry and foolish in its sheer size. One can't begin to fathom what could possibly have possessed Gustave Eiffel to design something so mammoth and beautiful. Standing under the extremely gigantic structure is when you begin to realize that there is absolutely no way a human hand can touch the surface.

The bases of the tower are a consortium of your friendly souvenir stores and ticket counters. Long snaking lines filled with chattering humans waiting to get onto the lift that will carry them to the top so that they can see what they could have seen up close at ground level. Boards claim information that the average waiting time in the queue is 20 minutes. I do not suspect that estimate at all.

Lunch was an Eiffel-side affair of cold sandwiches. The meaning of a cold sandwich took an entirely different meaning for me that day when I was chewing into my cold beef sandwich. My tortured mandibles were losing a battle against my screaming tummy when I realized that in Europe, cold sandwiches had every aspect of the raw materials cold, including the bread. Sitting on the lawn, gnawing on the bread and looking up at the looming steely beauty, noon passed us by and laziness crept upon us.

Having had our fill of the tower, we decided to move onto other eyefills. We had to meet a couple of acquaintances who were coming down to Paris for the evening which meant having to spend some time with them. The rendezvous was set up at the Paris Opera house from where a number of landmarks were walkable. Back to the dear Paris metro terminal where again I had a minor embarrassing moment when I could not find my metro pass while exiting the terminal. Mr.X again to the rescue and he found the pass conveniently lodged between the pages of my passport. Mr.X could not stop smirking at the prospective score: 2 - 0 to his advantage.