Sunday, March 7, 2010

The Eiffel outside my window

Greetings from the City of Lights! I'm afraid I must make this post brief because I can hardly keep my eyes open. Our flight from Little Rock to Chicago was uneventful, as was our eight-hour flight from Chicago to Paris. Uneventful is good but it also means we didn't get much of a sleep "event" either. Crowded seat row, chatty passengers and a few unhappy babies kept our cat naps to just that. We arrived at the airport Sunday morning (local time), met-up with our traveling companions who had taken another flight, and were taken by a driver to our hosts' home, arriving about 10 A.M. We did as is the recommendation after an overnight flight to Europe. We stayed up for the rest of the day, even though it felt like the middle of the night to our bodies' internal clocks (because it WAS the middle of the night back in Arkansas). To help keep us awake, we decided to go to the horse races because the particular track of interest only runs on Sundays. I'll post pictures and information tomorrow about our fun afternoon at the Auteuil steeple-chase race track today. After watching a few races and not winning nor losing big, we returned to our neighborhood for a nice dinner at the Ribe Restaurant, a classic French brasserie. Then, back to the apartment for the night (at 7:00 P.M. local time) with our eyes and bodies very weary. But here's the kicker The inspiration for this blog's title is something I knew before we arrived: that our hosts' lush apartment is literally steps away from the Eiffel tower! The magnificant, globally-recognized landmark dominates the view from the floor-to-ceiling windows in both the living and dining rooms. I had seen photos, but have now seen the million-dollar view for myself... I am truly getting an eye full (Eiffel) of Paris! I took the accompanying photo and video from the balcony outside those windows - a balcony that will become my favorite spot on the planet for these two weeks in March. Thanks for being interested in my posts; goodnight! _____________________________________ VIDEO NOTES: My apologies for the sideways orientation of the video. I forget that I can't "rotate counterclockwise" videos as I do when I take sideways photos. The tower is illuminated with "uplights" startring at dark each evening, but the "disco inferno" dazzle happens for a few minutes on the hour, each hour from dark to to 1:00 A.M. each night; that's what this video captures. SPECTACULAR!