Paris, this time with even more snow

From the top of the hill where Sacre-Coeur perches, the entire city of Paris looks almost manageable; of course, it isn't really, unless one has endless time and money. But it is a pleasant kind of unmanageable, the kind where I use the "submit and admit" mindframe so that I can relax and enjoy: submit to its charms, while admitting that I will never experience all of them.  With only four days in Paris on a student budget, it becomes necessary to trick my mind into forgetting this fact. 

This is a side street running along parallel to le Sacre Coeur, slick with ice. It was almost empty except for this woman. She looked serene and patient. Maybe she was there on a pilgrimage.

We could have taken a tram, clean glass and gleaming steel, all the way up the hill to the peak of Montmartre, but it seemed cheating, somehow. I didn't want to wait, suffocating in the hordes of others waiting for their turn to board; there was also a large number of fur-clad, elderly women and be-suited old men, so it would also have been a little shaming for two able-bodied youths to attempt to horn their way in the line. 

So we walked, placing each foot carefully on the next step, clinging to the rail, boots crunching on slush or sliding on ice. Once at the top, I surveyed my memory and remembered how I'd loved it up here as a girl, perhaps most of all, better than the Eiffel Tower or the artists' square.  Although I hadn't retained how vastly Paris spread out under me like an inviting, winter-tinged picnic spread, I did remember that white onion dome and the cobblestoned square in front of it. When we were here, vendors had taken it over, selling cheap trinkets and rubber balls and hot, sugar sprinkled crepes. Now, I suppose the cold and ice were too much for them. It was completely empty of enterprise. 

And finally, the Eiffel Tower. I was happy to revisit it, since it had been a decade since I'd last stood under its sturdy legs, sipping scalding hot chocolate. This was actually one of the first-nay, THE first- place we visited after our arrival. We exited the Metro stop and emerged into swirls of snowflakes; we strolled along the concrete, snow-softened banks of the Seine and made mitten-prints in the unblemished drifts. 

We knew the Tower was somewhere close, but it wasn't until my friend mentioned that she hoped we were going the right way that I looked up. I started laughing, and she followed my gaze and laughed too. It was there, looming out of the fog and snow, unimaginably huge, not 200 feet from where we stood. We'd been so taken by the snow and beauty (and a dead rat I'd found, perfectly frozen, curled in a snow-bed) that it had been growing closer and closer, without announcing its presence. It seemed perfect, iron grey and silent, modest in its dominance. 



In person, in is more gargantuan, and less iconic. The snow prevented us from ascention; this would prove to be the first of many such disappointments. The miser in me was relieved to not have to pay again; but since the last time I'd been ten, this must have been a senile, ridiculous miser, trying to rationalize myself into contentment. Because of all of the things in Paris that hold potential for disappointment, the view from the Eiffel Tower is not one of them. It is exactly like it should be.