Do you have a “life list?” A list of things to do, be, and acquire before you die? With this trip, another item is crossed off my list: see the holiday lights in Paris.Everyone knows that Paris is the “city of light” but during this holiday season, Paris is showing off more than her glittering Champs-Elysees, sparkling Eiffel Tower, and decorated bridges and monuments. About 50 neighborhoods are also lit up with thousands of gorgeous lights. This government-sponsored campaign, labeled Paris Illumine Paris 06, was initiated a couple of years ago to encourage shop owners to participate in further beautifying the city—and it is successful!! Every time you turn a corner, you see another landscape of lights. Gorgeous!
I’m told that every year the famous Paris department stores rival the store windows at Macy’s in NYC at Christmas. But this year, Galeries Lafayette has the world’s biggest Christmas tree (standing 20 meters high) decked out with over 55,000 bulbs of yellow and gold light. And the Printemps department store--well, I could see if from the Ferris Wheel on the Place de la Concorde tonight.
As some of you’ve seen, since 2000 the Eiffel Tower provides an additional light show every night for 10 minutes on the hour. To celebrate the new millennium and provide the glittering display, 20 mountain climbers worked every night for three months in 1999. They installed 20,000 light bulbs weighing eight tons; 800 strings of light weighing 25 kilos each and measuring 18 kilometers long; 60,000 flexible clips to attach the cables; 20,000 fasteners; 3 kilometers of angle irons; 230 enclosed lighting fixtures; and 30 kilometers of electrical cords. Fortunately, for me, all these lights will continue to glow until midnight (1:00 AM on weekends) through January 15th! And since we have less than nine hours of daylight at this time of the year, that’s a lot of dazzling lights!! Bien sur!An aside--in case you don't know--it took two years, two months, and five days to construct the Eiffel Tower starting in 1887 and finishing on March 31, 1889. The tower is composed of 18,038 individual parts which were produced by 100 ironworkers. The weight of the tower's metal framework is 7,300 tons; the weight of the entire structure is 10,000 tons. There are 1,665 steps in the tower; and it is 324 meters high (counting the flag pole) or 1,063 feet. The tower is painted three different colors, getting darker from bottom to top so that it looks uniform.
The contractor, of course, was Gustave Eiffel who had his own little penthouse at the very top. He worked on the structure for the Statue of Liberty and the Panama Canal as well; he supposedly was the first to think of putting a tunnel under the Eiffel Tower and a train station under Paris. Gustave was born in Dijon with the surname of Bonickhausen. But his parents later changed it to Eiffel as the French had a hard time pronouncing his name. He was not always a good student but did earn a degree in chemistry. The completion of the Eiffel Tower was a builder's dream: on time, no mistakes, and no accidents. Amazing.
A comment about the Christmas trees here. Most are either natural, white or red flocked. And most use only lights (some twinkling; some not), ribbons and bows for decoration. When you do see a tree with bulbs (solid colors only) (like at the Holiday Inn), it seems almost garish. Americans are accused by the Europeans of being materialist. Could our Christmas trees be the confirmation that they are correct?
