22 December 2025
Today, I felt like I really did buy that stairway to heaven.
Let me start from the beginning (always a very good place to start, right 😊)
We’re in Paris, because that was the first place Jean said he would like to go to. Not sure why at all, but here we are. So we figured the best way to do it, was to take the hop-on, hop-off bus. That way we could happily just sit, and see all the sites.
We easily navigated ourselves to the starting point of said bus. Well – truthfully, it is Frances who has taken charge of navigating, and doing a pro job at it, of course. And we were quite surprised at how well Jean was paying attention to the audio guide on the bus. Well – that is if he could manage to keep the headphones in his ears – not made for little people, I guess. The only thing that bothered him, was the music. One of his comments: “They are really talking about interesting things, but then they play such sad music…”
After a few “Oh Wow” moments, we decided to get off the bus at the Eiffel tower. Me took a bit of a stroll through the market nearby, and then we decided to take the big step. Brave the very long queues for the Eiffel Tower. And very long queues they were. For the entrance to the area surrounding the tower (here we had to go through a security check), then a very long queues for bathrooms, and then the very long queue to purchase tickets. But eventually, after another security check, we were on our way. Well. So – here’s the thing. If you accidentally miss where the lift is (No! Don’t ask how!), and start up the stairs (thinking that the lift might just be up one flight!), then you accidentally opt in to climb the stairs entirely. Or what I thought would then at least just be to the first floor. I only just survived that, at least. So now I was frantically looking for the lift that would politely hoist my exhausted body to the second floor. A word of warning. You can only take the lift from the ground floor directly to the second floor. And on your way down, you can stop on the first floor for a bit of a look there. You can absolutely not take a lift from the first to the second floor. Of course not. So guess what I did today? I climbed the stairs from the ground floor to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. 674 stairs, to be exact. Only to spend about 5 minutes up there, before we took the lift down. But at least, Jean loved the experience, even though he did have to wait patiently every two flights for his exhausted gran.
And that was about as much as I could deal with for the day. So we dragged our tired bodies back to our accommodation, had a good supper, and fell into bed quite early.
A word of warning. Paris is VERY busy this time of year. Really VERY busy. But a little man that I love so dearly really wanted to see it. I’m sure there is a great deal more that he can see, but I think he has a good idea of Paris now. So tomorrow, we will move on to Belgium.
