Paris - The Eiffel Tower

When the Jarvis family got to the plaza of the Eiffel Tower the adults diversified into 3 lines – one to ask the about the price and timing of the walk up the tower and 2 of us in separate line-ups to find tickets that would take us up the elevators.

“Twenty minutes to walk to the first level. Forty-five minutes to wait in the line that will take you up to the first level,” I heard the attendant say to Catherine.

I was in the line to go up the tower in the elevator.

I wasn’t going to wait 45 minutes in the line-up while the rest of the Jarvis family made it up the tower in 20 minutes.

The man lifted the barrier line aside slightly and I ducked under it, letting me go with the Jarvis’s on our walk up the tower.

“Are you sure you can make it,” said Eric.

“Only 300 steps to the first level,” coached Tom as he would run ahead up the steps and then come back down them to check on how we were doing.

“One step at a time,” I kept thinking, at the same time reminding Catherine that for coffee breaks at the library I used to ascend and descend stairs, so I was sure I could manage that walk.

I wouldn't have missed that delicous burn that comes to the upper thighs on such a walk for anything. The number of steps is debatable, but from the way I am leaning onto the rail for suppport, I am guessing the approximate number would be 600 for me, -- considerably more for Tom who ran each flight going up the tower, both up and then down to check on how the adults were doing.

Catie had something else on her mind on her climb.

She had seen a hawker on the square, selling a mechanical bird that would fly.

Every 20 steps or so up the tower, she would remind Catherine, “Don’t forget. I want to buy that bird when we get back down to the bottom of the tower.”

And Catherine would assure her, “Don’t worry, I will remember.”

“O.K.,” said her mother when our feet had descended the last of the stairwells and we were on terra firma again. “Now is the time to barter.”

And we went off to find the hawker with the mechanical birds.

“Fifteen euros,” said that man who was wearing an umbrella hat.

Catie said only shook her head.

“Twelve,” he continued.

Still she shook her head.

The hawker looked at her mother and dad.

They shook their head at him.

“It is your money, Catie. You decide,” they both said as she struggled with the problem of to buy or not to buy.

“Eight,” he said.

Catherine leaned over to see what Catie’s resistance to the price was, given that she had been dying to buy that object on every stair case level as she climbed the Eiffel Tower.

She was so nervous.

“I don’t have the change to give him,” she whispered back to her mother.

“Don’t worry. Eric can help you with the change,” said Catherine and the deal was made.

The vendor shot away as soon as he had his money.

His exit speed alerted Catherine to a scam.

She saw the package had already been opened and that it was missing some vital parts.

She grabbed Catie’s hand whose feet were now barely touching the ground as Catherine was dragging her across the square behind her.

She was leaving the rest of us stunned where we stood and saying to Catie, “We are going to have him put this together for us.”

Catherine was whipping across the plaza after the hawker.

“No,” he said, when she caught up to him and said to him, “Please put this together for us, or give us another package.

“Yes,” she insisted. “You put this one together or give us another.”

“No,” again he said.

By the time we got over there the conversation between them had heightened in intensity.

“You, don’t understand. Go away,” he said. “The police are watching us and they will take me away. You don’t know how hard this is for us.”

“I do undertand.” Catherine was at her finest, firmly insisting to him that she understood but in her best French, also saying, “You have taken the money of a child. Give it back.”

Of course she was speaking in French, though she is a very reticent French speaker.

I could only understand the fire of her intensity of her words, “C’est l’argent d’une enfant,” she repeated over and over again to him.

He buckled, took the damaged package back and tossed another package at Catherine’s feet before slipping away into the crowd.

Catherine nonchalantly picked it up, gave it to Catie, and they walked away, hand in hand.

Problem resolved.

In the evening we sat at the park by the church, the bird now assembled and flying through the air.

Maybe you can see the red airplane there at about Catie's shoulder level.

Other children in the park stood by and watched Catie played with her fabulous purchase of the day.

A local comic was making Eric and me laugh so loudly.

You can see him there behind Rebecca and Tom. They are still playing at the statue of the head, the ear and the hand. The kids are tucked between the hand and the head and the comic has slipped up behind them to scare them. He must have let them see him approach -- otherwise one of them would have lept off of the statue in fright.

His costume was a simple red knit tam and a red nose that he would put on and off.

He would then walk behind people strolling through the park, unseen by them, a red bulb on his nose, imitating their gait and gestures.

Five and six year olds would then follow the comic, walking behind him, imitating his imitation of the adult in front of him.

Eric and I could not contain our nervous laughter.

I said to him, “What is it that is making us laugh. We know he is mocking others, and we can’t stop ourselves from joining in on the pleasure of his antics. Look, he has the people he is imitating, dissolving in hysterics as well.”

Another lovely day.


Arta