Le Tour Eiffel

  The Eiffel Tower has become one of my key navigation pieces.  If I am lost I can usually look to the sky, find the tower, and know my bearings well enough.  I have never been very good at knowing N, E, S, W type directions.  They seem to fly out the window when you are here in Paris anyway.  The roads here are not parallel, not even close.  All the roads make triangles that end in a circle.  You may be walking two streets that were at one point parallel, but now they cross.  It is utterly boggling to my directionally inept brain.  Just when you think you know, boom...not even close.  So, best case, you look and spot a tip of the Eif and know you can at least orient to that.  Luckily, J and I are on one side of the river Seine (left bank) and we can see Le Tour when we are on the way to the metro.  Here's a picture of the Eiffel Tower from our closest metro:

  Only a few stops up is the Trocadero exit.  I was running errands to our bank, which is off this exit, and could not resist the sunny day and opportunities that this exit offered.  Truly, this is the best exit to take when wanting to view the Eiffel.  It lets you off onto a viewing area between to museums, which leads to the fountain park that leads to the Tower itself.  Here are some pictures:

  This is where everyone holds out two fingers to look like they are pinching the Tower.  So many tourists, so little time...

  Here, you can see the tall building just to the left of the tower, it is Tour Montparnasse.  J and I live in that district...kind of puts things in perspective.

  This is a picture from the fountains.  What a great day to run errands and run into this.  Struggling with the language and the lack of community have been compensated by living so close to beauty and old world loveliness around every corner.   I look forward to exploring more!
~L