{"id":1724,"date":"2020-12-29T18:54:41","date_gmt":"2020-12-29T18:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1724"},"modified":"2020-12-29T18:54:41","modified_gmt":"2020-12-29T18:54:41","slug":"the-eiffel-tower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1724","title":{"rendered":"The Eiffel Tower"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the features of Power Tasting<\/em> is a monthly article on a Place to Visit that isn\u2019t about wine but is in Wine Country.\u00a0 And since this edition is about the beaten path, there\u2019s no path in all of France that\u2019s been trod more often than the one that leads to the Eiffel Tower.\u00a0 But wait, is Paris really in Wine Country?\u00a0 Surprisingly, the answer is \u201cyes\u201d.\u00a0 You can make a day trip to Champagne or the Loire and amazingly, there are still a handful vineyards in Paris itself.\u00a0 None of the urban vineyards are very big (one has only ten vines) but they qualify the city for inclusion.<\/p>\n

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The Eiffel Tower from the Trocadero.\u00a0 Photo courtesy of the Hotel Eiffel Trocadero.<\/em><\/p>\n

So about that tower.\u00a0 For one thing, it\u2019s one of those iconic structures, along with the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben and the Kremlin, that are emblematic of their entire country.\u00a0 Its story is pretty well known, so we\u2019ll recount it here only briefly.\u00a0 It was named for Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built it for the 1889 World\u2019s Fair or Exposition Universelle<\/em>.\u00a0 It was derided in its own time but has become beloved ever since.\u00a0 You can ride to near the top for a great view of Paris, with restaurants on the second and third levels.<\/p>\n

The issue is not whether you\u2019ll see the Eiffel Tower.\u00a0 When you go to Paris, you can\u2019t miss it and you\u2019ll take your picture in front of it.\u00a0 We\u2019d like to give you some ideas as to how<\/em> to see it.<\/p>\n

The Eiffel Tower is located in the 7th<\/sup> Arrondissement, on the Left Bank of the Seine. This sector is one of the more elegant residential areas of the city and worth walking around in.\u00a0 The tower itself is in a park, the Champs de Mars, where royal troops used to train back in the time just before the French Revolution.\u00a0 In pleasant weather, you can join Parisians in stretching out, kicking a ball or listening to itinerant musicians.\u00a0 Or you can walk up to the Eiffel Tower, lean your head back and try to take it all in.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s why Eiffel\u2019s contemporaries couldn\u2019t appreciate it; they couldn\u2019t really see it properly.<\/p>\n

For us, the best place to see the tower is across the river at the Place du Trocadero.\u00a0 Sit at a caf\u00e9 on the place<\/em> and soak in the view.\u00a0 From there you can see the tower in the perspective we believe Eiffel intended, massive but contained within Paris.\u00a0 Keep in mind that only a few decades before the fair, Paris had been completely renovated into the gorgeous city we know today.\u00a0 The Eiffel Tower added an exclamation point to the city. Viewing it from the Trocadero puts it in context.<\/p>\n

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Hovering over the city.<\/em><\/p>\n

As you walk around the sector where the tower is, you\u2019ll see it above many of the rooftops.\u00a0 There\u2019s no better way to enjoy this kind of view than sitting in a caf\u00e9 with a coffee and a French pastry or with a glass of wine.\u00a0 And do see it at night.\u00a0 Since the Millennium celebration, the Eiffel Tower erupts in a symphony of flashing lights, for five minutes every hour on the hour.\u00a0 The Parisians have never lacked for a sense of the dramatic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the features of Power Tasting is a monthly article on a Place to Visit that isn\u2019t about wine but is in Wine Country.\u00a0 And since this edition is about the beaten path, there\u2019s no path in all of France that\u2019s been trod more often than the one that leads to the Eiffel Tower.\u00a0 … Continue reading The Eiffel Tower<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1727,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724\/revisions\/1727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}