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| Taken on the Eiffel Tower | | |
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| Wondering who's idea it was to build the black monstrosity. |
It looks great up close-they painted it just a couple years ago. The very best restaurant in Paris (I'm told) is the "Jules Verne" which is located inside the Eiffel Tower. A reservation takes three months in advance to get.
The view is to die for. We took the stairs for a modest 4.50 euro and not the elevator for around 20. Didn't need to get to the very tip top-and there is lots of historical stuff to see as you ascend.
Looking up into the thing-it really is a huge erector set. I was told it was supposed to have a skin or facade but everyone liked the bare metal. It's made from pig iron-one of the very last large constructions before the introduction of steel.
A slight variation on the theme-an exterior skeleton wrapping a large building-somehow got around the strict zoning, which was probably the most creative part of the whole thing.
They have this thing for trimming trees into boxes-saw it in other places in Paris. Not sure what it means or where it started or how they do it-but it looks really different.
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| A little street art. |
#12- Chopin died here.
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| One of the great fountains. |
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On this site, Marie Antoinette was publicly beheaded. There is now a very large and very old obelisk on the site, with diagrams showing how it was removed from ancient Egypt and re-erected in the middle of Paris.
A lovely garden sculpture-there are actually many of these throughout the park just West of the Louvre.More of that crazy topiary.
