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| Buzzy Atop the Eiffel Tower |
When passing thru Paris last week, the sight of the Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower brought back some nice memories for me of when Buzzy and I were there in 1998. We were with a tour group and the afternoon schedule consisted of two optional tours, one to the Louvre or one to Versailles. While everyone else on the tour went on one of these two optional excursions, Buzzy and I elected instead to head out on our own for the afternoon. Fortunately our first stop was the Arc de Triomphe. I say fortunately because we had some energy to do the trek thru the tunnel to get to the Arc and then to climb the 230 plus stairs up to its top. Buzzy was “only” 75 years old at the time and while he huffed and complained some, he was still able to make it to the top of the Arc where we checked things out. click here for video tour of the Arc.
From there we headed to the Eiffel Tower where thankfully there was an elevator to take us to the top. We then went back to the hotel to regroup and Buzzy after knocking back a couple of Black Velvets said he was done for the day.
I ingested some caffeine, went back out and ended up at Pere Lachaise Cemetery where I paid a visit to the Lizard King. The Greek on the tombstone was added at the request of Jim’s father and according to one source translates as “he created his own demons.” However, another source has it as “he was true to his own spirit.” Seems that those Greek translations can say pretty much whatever you want them to say doesn’t it?
That evening our tour group regathered and went to a bistro for dinner. We sat across from some snooty lady from Richmond who assumed that we had gone to Versailles because she had not seen us on the Louvre tour. I told her what we had done instead. She followed up with “You mean you passed up an opportunity to see either the Louvre or Versailles and chose to do neither? I find that hard to believe.” While I searched for something diplomatic to say, Buzzy said, “Palaces and museums, seen one, seen ’em all.” The lady didn’t say anything and went back to buttering her croissant. Her husband leaned across the table however and said to us, “Wish I’d went with you guys.”
(Ironically, this picture to the left was taken by the same lady’s husband the day before when our group had done a bus tour of the city and had stopped for a photo op.)