5 things about visiting the Eiffel Tower

I’ve got friends who’d been to Paris but never ascended the Eiffel Tower. This baffles me. Isn’t that the whole point of visiting the city of a thousand lights? The common reason- the queue was too long. And with precious time to explore the city, lining up for a few hours didn’t seem wise.

My experience with the Tower was a breeze, all you need is sensible time planning.

Buying tickets in advance, or not

I briefly contemplated this, but decided against it. While I like to plan my itinerary, I didn’t particularly like to be tied down by advance purchase of tickets, unless I’m visiting a theme park and spending the whole day there. But if you are a stickler for planning, this is something you might consider. There are usually two queues to go up the tower, the ticketing queue and the actual queue to ascend. If you have gotten your tickets online, at least you can skip one queue line.

Stay near the tower?

This was what I opted for. I wanted to have flexibility of visiting the tower anytime I wanted to. At the same time, I didn’t want to deal with the disappointment of going all the way there and having to turn back due to long snaking queues. Staying nearby means I can tweak my itinerary to come back for a visit should it get crazy crowded. Also, you can probably choose a room with a view of the Eiffel, adding a romantic view to your Parisian stay.

The early bird really catches the worm

This is a no brainer. For an attraction as famous as the Eiffel Tower, there are bound to be crowds all day long, so go early. You needn’t only visit on weekday mornings to avoid the crowd. I visited the tower on a Sunday at 9am, just when it was ready to greet guests. There was surprisingly no queue for ticket purchase. The waiting line to ascend the tower only took about ten minutes.  There are two parts to going up the tower. The first offers you two options: you can either climb up twenty floors to get to the first landing, or take the lift.

At the 20^th level, you get a pretty decent view of city. Take your time to look around. You can remain here as long as you want before taking the next lift to the top. When buying tickets, you can choose between the cheaper ticket that brings you to this level, or grab the one that takes you all the way up.

Making sure everything stays in place

This is something for the girls. Regardless of the 20^th or the summit, it gets crazy windy, and that puts a dampener on having a nice picture taken. You really wouldn’t want to give your best smile at the camera, only to be ruined by unruly hair that flies all over the place, or worse, in your face. So always bring along either sunglasses, scarves, or just tie your hair up. Trust me, you’ll be thankful you remembered any one of those things I’ve mentioned.

Bring along a selfie stick

With so any visitors at the tower, and almost every one of them snapping away, it gets tough asking someone else to take picture for you. And what if the angle’s not right? Or that they didn’t capture the right lighting on your face. So many things can go wrong. With a selfie stick, you can grab as many pictures of you with the entire city as your backdrop, and the only thing you need to worry about, is your arm getting tired from holding the stick. If you haven’t got a clue what it is, a selfie stick is an extension stick that you can attach to your phone for you to capture a better picture when you take a selfie.

Once you’re at the top, don’t be too obsessed about clicking away on your camera. Take some time to really look around the city and soak in the immense beauty that lay in front of you. Spot the Arc de Triomphe with Champ Elysees running in front of it. Or the Basilica de Sacre Coeur on the highest ground in Paris.  The world cannot get more beautiful than right at the moment when you’re on top of Paris.

Have you gone up the Eiffel Tower before, how was your experience like?