Our family trip to Paris would overlap my son’s 15th birthday, so of course we asked him what he’d like to do. His answer? Go out for dinner, then climb the Eiffel Tower at night. Our reaction? What an inspired idea for a 14-year-old. Let’s do it.
Inspired and apt. While Paris goes by many nicknames, the best known is “The City of Light.” The nickname has little to do with what a 21st century urban dweller would predict. It’s not about electronic billboards or blocks of blazing skyscrapers. Paris is far more subtle than, say, New York or Tokyo.
One theory has Paris gaining its nickname from its fame as a place of ideas, learning and art. Another says it arose simply because the city was one of the first to light its streets at night.
Both theories may fit the epithet, but it’s more likely that Paris became “La Ville-Lumière” in the mid nineteenth century when city planner Baron Haussmann completely redesigned Medieval Paris, pulling down narrow, dark streets and replacing them with wide, bright avenues. Among many other major changes to the city, Haussman is responsible for the famous Champs-Élysées and the other eleven avenues that lead like the spokes of a wheel to the iconic Arc de Triomphe.
Whether he knew it or not, my son’s choice of birthday activities was perfectly suited to our host city. We set out, Haussmann’s avenues and the River Seine serving as our guide on our nighttime exploration of “La Ville-Lumière”.
At dusk, we discover people teaching each other to dance at three locations along the Seine within sight of Notre Dame Cathedral. As people arrive, each with food or wine to add to a collective picnic, they are greeted warmly with kisses on the cheek and an invitation to dance – waltz, salsa, foxtrot and jive. One location seems reserved just for the tango. Some are beginners, others are so practiced, they are mesmerizing to watch. Everyone is smiling and at times laughing, either with the joy of the dance or perhaps with an understanding of their own inelegance. It’s certainly the latter for my partner and I when our kids finally manage to shove us out into the crowd for a stab at the jive.
Across the river along the Champs-Élysées, the atmosphere is completely different at night, though the street seems as wide as the river. What should be spacious sidewalks are jammed with diners and sightseers. Lined with shops, their window displays aglow, the avenue seems lit from within. It’s a surprisingly long and intense walk to that mammoth monument at the hub of the twelve avenues, the Arc de Triomphe, which seems to serve no other purpose than to impress.
Finally, it’s on to the goal for the evening, one of the world’s most recognizable buildings – and its tallest for its first two decades – the Eiffel Tower. As we approach across Pont d’Iéna, searchlights scan the city from the tip of the tower. Suddenly, it erupts in a dizzying display of sparkling blue lights, and we can’t wait to ascend.
Standing beneath the tower and then climbing it, we truly appreciate its size and the feat of engineering it took to build it in just two short years. The world’s last great all-iron construction project, the tower’s 18,000 individual pieces weighing some 7300 tons are held together with some 2.5 million rivets.
Over 250 million people have visited Eiffel’s entry arch to the World’s Fair of 1889, but because it’s late in the evening by now, the lineups are mercifully short. After just a five minute wait for tickets, we’re inside one of the legs, climbing the stairs to the first, then the second level.
From the second of three platforms, Paris at night stretches away in all directions. Sites we’ve already visited are lit so they stand out against the dark buildings around them. Sacré-Cœur Basilica on Montmartre rises atop what seems the only high point of land in sight. The many bridges of Paris punctuate the Seine as it winds away from us in two directions. And to the southeast directly beneath us stretch the winding, tree-lined paths of Parc du Champs-de-Mars.
Birthday boy takes a 360 degree look at one the world’s great cities, and just before we get the call that it’s time to descend back to Earth, he poses with his sister for a photo he’ll be showing his grandchildren.
Photo Credits
All Photos © Darcy Rhyno – All Rights Reserved
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Great description of Paris after dark. Amazing pictures.