Eiffel Tower

Eiffel kept a small office on the tippy top of his edifice. Presumably there was an elevator back then.

The Eiffel Tower, the tallest building in Paris, is the most visited paid monument in the world. Millions ascend it every year, including us with Mary and her crew in '08 (time flies). The thing built for the 1889 World's Fair and the facts: 324 meters tall equal to 81-one stories and the tallest structure in the world until the Chrysler building surpassed it in 1930. Excluding the broadcast antennas, EF the tallest in France until 2004 when the Millau Viaduct surpassed it. Bastards. And while the tower an iron structure, weighing aprox. 10,000 tons, it has a low density weighing less than a cylinder of air occupying the same dimensions as the tower. The walk to the first level over 300 steps, as is the walk from the first to second. The third and highest level is accessible only by lift.

I take this picture shortly before an afternoon meeting from the Trocadero, site of the Palais de Chaillot, in the 16 arrondisement across the Seine from the EF. The first time I was here in '81 with my family visiting Aunte Marcia and Uncle Larry who lived in the 14th near the Bois de Bologne when Larry running a substantial business for Citicorp as an expat.

Me: "Did you practice your trumpet?"

Madeleine: "No. I didn't have time."

Me: "You had time to watch a movie last night."

Madeleine: "Why do you have to be so harsh?"

Eitan (in the car to swimming) "Montrose is the perfect city."

Me: "Yes?"

Eitan: "It is so clean. It is not dirty like Waterloo."

Madeleine: "Or Hammersmith!"

Me:

Eitan: "You would never find a cigarette on the ground."

Madeleine: "Why does Huckleberry Finn smoke a pipe?"

Me: