I have been captivated by the Eiffel Tower ever since I was 8 years old… I really was fascinated by this majestic building. It had always appealed to my imagination and yet I hadn’t been up the Eiffel Tower up until recently… nearly 40 years after my adoration of the Eiffel Tower began…

Going up the Eiffel Tower has been on my  bucketlist for so long. But everytime I’m in Paris I’m only there for a day and then I don’t want to waste hours queueing… or I’m in Paris with a bunch of people and not everyone is interested in going up the Eiffel Tower…

But now my friend Katrien and I would go to Paris for a weekend, so Katrien suggested we’d buy tickets to go up the Eiffel Tower as she knew I was dying to get on top…

And seriously? I was the happiest person alive being able to finally go up on the Eiffel Tower. We had the most amazing weather and when the city turned orange, pink and then blue… I can honestly say I was in heaven… I even got a bit emotional seeing the fabulous sunset over my beloved city.

Here are some tips for your Eiffel Tower visit:

• If you want to go up the Eiffel Tower on a specific time, make sure to buy tickets well in advance: https://www.toureiffel.paris/en
• Show up on time or even a bit early! You’ll still have to queue… and the handbags will be checked twice (once at the entrance of the Eiffel Tower site and once before going inside the elevator). We had 5.30pm tickets, but I guess it took us another 1.5 hours to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower!
• We wanted to be on the Eiffel Tower near sunset. On this site you can check the sunrise/sunset hours everywhere in the world on any given date! Sunset at 7 pm? Make sure to buy 5 or 5.30 pm tickets as it takes a bit of time to actually get on top of the Eiffel Tower!
• I booked our tickets 2 months in advance and sunrise/sunset hours were nearly sold out… if you want to have a specific hour, book your tickets way in advance!
• Going up?  Don’t bother buying only level 1 tickets… top level is so much higher, so much better, so much more worth it… do it all the way or not at all 🙂
• When queueing, there are always people having excuses to try to skip the line… they have a restaurant booking, they are with a group of friends that are already on the site, they have an event to get to… don’t give in or you’ll be queueing forever!!

Other views that are well worth it:

• The view you have from Tour Monparnasse is absolutely brilliant… here you get to see Paris WITH Eiffeltower! Check out my travelpost here.

• Do you want a free view? Go up the top floor of Galeries Lafayette to admire a fabulous view over the City of Lights… and it costs you nada (if you can get to the top floor without buying anything in Galeries Lafayette that is… good luck on that!). Check more pictures in this post.

• The view from the Sacré Coeur site is also to be recommended… I will do a new post about Montmartre really soon, but here’s the link to an earlier travelpost about this lovely bit of Paris.

Can you recommend other places in Paris which offer a splendid view? Do tell in the comments!

Love, Kathleen