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{{date|August|5|2005}}
{{RyanBlog}}
[[Category:France]]
[[Category:Paris]]

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[[Image:Eiffel_view_champs_de_mars.jpg|thumb|right|Champ de Mars from the Eiffel Tower]]
[[Image:Eiffel_elevator_bottom.jpg|thumb|right|Man hanging over the edge of...]]
[[Image:Eiffel_elevator_shaft.jpg|thumb|right|this.]]
[[Image:Eiffel_elevator_top.jpg|thumb|right|One elevator I definitely won't be playing on top of...]]

Nigo (Malaysian friend), and I went early to climb the Eiffel. There was a huge line to ride the elevator to the top of the Eiffel, even at 10am. There was no line and only a 3E charge to climb the stairs, so we did that. It wasn't really that bad of a climb. Every so often there's a placard with some interesting tidbits to read and give yourself a rest. I must say, the tower is much larger in person than it seems in the pictures. It is massive, especially given when it was completed, 1889. The first tier was dedicated to another project that Eiffel worked on, the Statue of Liberty. Ironically, I consider the statue to be much smaller than in the pictures. The view from the second tier was good enough. It wasn't worth another 45 minutes wait and 3.20E to ride the rest of the way to the top. It's too bad they don't allow you to climb the stairs to the top floor. 

While we were climbing the stairs, there was a man working on the underside of the elevator. He was trying to attach some netting to it. This picture is of him leaning from his ladder to the center of the bottom of the elevator. Scary stuff at 200ft in the air. 

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