lesson 10

Paris, France

　　A short time later our plane began to slow and bank. Lovely, green England came into view, but we soon left England behind. After watching the English Channel slip by, France appeared, the land carved into squares of green and brown.

　　Paris, lovely, green romantic Paris, a city of contrasts-I fell in love with her as so many others have before me. Magnificent modern buildings were everywhere, but in between them stood tiny ancient shops and apartments. As long as I live, I'll remember my first night in Paris when I stood on Montamarte, the highest hill in the city, the lights of Paris spread in a panorama below while the cool autumn breeze whispered through the trees. I could not believe I was really there!

　　The next morning, we enjoyed a tour of Paris, which is just as beautiful by day as by night. The tree-lined streets were spotless, for each morning, water from the River Seine flows from drains onto the streets where shopkeepers with long reed brooms sweep the streets clean. We drove past many famous restaurants, shops and apartment houses. At the end of the most famous street in Paris, the Champs Elysse, stood the golden Arch of Triumph through which the Allies in World War Ⅱ marched after driving defeated Germans from the city.

　　As we walked through the grounds around Notre Dame, I gazed above me at imposing Gothic towers silhouetted like giant sentinels against the gray sky. From the top of the Cathedral wall rain spouts jutted about every twelve feet, each spout made in the face of an animal, the rain pouring from its mouth.

　　Inside the Cathedral, exquisite, elegant rosette stained glass windows gleamed from a sudden burst of sunlight forcing its way through the clouds as though heaven had opened long enough to light them for us. One of the windows had been badly damaged during World War Ⅱ. All the colors in the replacement glass perfectly match the undamaged window except blue; the formula for this shade of blue had been lost and could not be duplicated no matter how hard the artists tried. To my untrained eye, it was undetected.

　　The Eiffel Tower, an extraordinary edifice made of interlocking steel girders soared into the sky, glittering brightly in the sunlight. The Eiffel Tower, a skeleton iron tower, is 934 feet high, built as a feature of the World's Fair held in Paris in 1889. The lower section consists of four arched columns, each providing a supporting base 330 feet square. The columns curve toward each other until they unite in a single column 620 feet above the ground. Platforms are at the 189 ft., the 380 feet and 906 feet levels on the first level is a restaurant. Each platform has its own observation deck. The Eiffel Tower plays an important part in scientific research, first being utilized as a radio broadcasting station. Searchlights are mounted near the top as are a meteorological observatory and physical and biological laboratories.

　　We rode in an elevator as far as it could go toward the top of the Eiffel Tower and climbed narrow metal steps the rest of the way to a platform high in the sky. We could see the whole city of Paris from there-a most breathtaking sight.