Being a tourist at the Eiffel Tower

I know I said I wanted to do untouristy things whilst I was here (see last post) but yesterday, having spent hours reading (or trying to read) some awful long french article for one of my modules I thought "you know what, i'm in Paris, I'm going to go and take a selfie with the Eiffel Tower", and so I did. They say that as a foreigner in Paris, no matter how many times you see the Eiffel Tower it is never not exciting and breathtaking, and I have to say that's true (although i've only been here two weeks, we'll see at the end of the year). As I turned the corner at the top of the Jardins de Trocadero there it is, huge and looming straight ahead, and as impressive as ever. It's kind of weird how this effectively useless monument has become so hugely popular and so hugely iconic of Paris.

I could not believe the amount of people that were there, like me, to take photos of it, with it etc. People doing wedding photo shoots, popping champagne in their finest dresses for photos with the Eiffel Tower in the background. Selfie sticks left, right and centre, silly poses trying to pinch the top of it. It's such a bizarre thing to sit and watch people doing but then you can't judge people because we're all equally guilty of doing exactly the same thing and 5 minutes later it was me, on my own, posing for selfies with it in the background.

The size of it is hard to comprehend as well. It looms way above any of the surrounding buildings, so stood out from the rest of Paris. If you stand underneath it and look up it makes you feel dizzy, and i'm sure if you stand at the top and look down you feel even dizzier. On my list of things I want to do is go up to the observation deck of the Tour Montparnasse because I think you would get a great view of the Eiffel Tower and how it stands out against the Paris skyline. It's like when you go up the Empire State building in New York, you get a great view of New York, but not of the world-famous building itself because you're stood on it. Where as from the Rockefeller centre you get an amazing view of New York AND the Empire State building. So I think it would be cool to see the Eiffel Tower from a different view point than the ground.

I always forget what a weird light brown colour it is. Imagine if it was in gold or silver, or metallic pink, like the tiny little key rings sold underneath it, 5 for 1€.

A brief history of the Eiffel tower (as googled by me): 
- Designed by Gustave Eiffel, in 1889 to celebrate the 100-anniversary of the French Revolution.
- At the time it was completed it was the tallest building in the world at 381m. (The current tallest building, Burj Khalifa in Dubai stands at 828m, almost 3 times the height of the Tour Eiffel).
- It was only intended to be a temporary structure and was nearly torn down in 1909, but saved due to recognition for its usage as a radiotelegraph station (it is apparently not as useless as I thought).
- It is repainted every 7 years (maybe metallic pink is an option?) and receives more visitors yearly than any other monument in the world, over 7 million on average.
- You can have dinner on the Eiffel tower for 190€ per person, plus 95€ for wine. Anyone want to take me?

Sciences Po - First impressions

So I have arrived in Paris and yesterday was the first day of the Welcome Programme for international students. It's so nice to be in Paris because I had forgotten how completely beautiful it is. This is the view from the apartment that mum and I have rented on Airbnb for a week:

... Just in case you weren't quite sure you were in Paris! 

The apartment is great, really spacious, with stunning views, and only a 15 minute walk from Sciences Po, so it's a perfect location while I do the welcome week and hunt for somewhere more permanent to live. However it is ridiculously hot in Paris at the moment and finding somewhere to live is proving rather difficult so that's not so perfect.

Anyway, yesterday was the first day of the welcome programme. I arrived in the morning and there was coffee and croissants and then we had talks by the director of Sciences Po, the dean, and various other student societies. The 'directeur', Frédéric Mion, was so suave and cool and charming in his speech, and he is apparently very popular with students which I can completely understand! He just seemed so much more 'with-it' than the Vice Chancellor of Warwick, our dear old Nige Thrifty, the contrast was ridiculous. So that first introduction to Sciences Po impressed me because if its run by someone who seems so cool it must be a cool place to study. 

The rest of the day we spent in our groups having a campus tour, because there are several different buildings in the similar area which make up Sciences Po. It's hard to explain quite how in the middle of the city it is, but as an example, there is literally a Paul Smith shop on the corner of the Sciences Po main 27 rue Saint-Guillaume building, and a Louboutin just round the corner in the next road. It's right off of the boulevard Saint-Germain and so it is completely in the heart of Paris which is amazing. It does make me wander if i'm going to ever switch out of travel mode and into study mode but we will see. The buildings are the same beautiful old architecture that just characterises Paris and is such a stark contrast to the ugly concrete 1960s buildings that make up most of Warwick. Sciences Po doesn't have its on sports facilities like Warwick, there's way less student societies (and no cheerleading squads) but it has working wifi which is about the only similarity to Warwick. I think it will be interesting to see how the academics differ/are the same once I start my lectures on Monday 31st August. 

Below shows the 'campus' map and also the entrance to their main building: 

  

Before the welcome programme started I didn't really know what to expect, I knew there would obviously be lots of international students and so I wasn't really surprised when everyone was speaking to each other in English. Everyone is so friendly though and it's amazing how far people have come compared to my 2 hour train journey from London. There are lots of australians/americans here on exchange and although we're all native english speakers we have all come to Paris with the same goal of learning french, we're all going to be studying in french, it's just difficult to enforce french amongst ourselves. Hopefully as we start lectures we will meet some actual french people but so far the only new word I have learnt is "arvo" which is Australian for afternoon!

I don't have anymore activities as part of the welcome programme this week so i'm going to continue searching for an apartment with mum and we did a bit of exploring the Montparnasse area this morning which I'll blog about in the next post. This evening I'm going to meet up with some of the girls I met yesterday and I think our plan is to sit somewhere along the Seine and drink wine. We're basically already Parisian. 

P.S. IF YOU KNOW ANYONE WITH A SPARE ROOM TO RENT IN PARIS N'HESITEZ PAS A ME CONTACER. SVP.