Paris in Spring: The Tower and the Seine

We came up the steps at Trocadéro after dark, and there it was, gold from the ground to the tip, with a searchlight turning slowly out of the top of it and sweeping across the sky. The whole terrace was standing still holding up phones, several hundred people caught by the same thing at the same moment, and I did not feel even slightly above it. Some sights are worth the crowd they draw.

Paris in spring is a city where the trees are still deciding whether to commit to leaves and every terrace chair already faces the street like a seat saved for a show. It knows exactly what it is, and has for a few centuries, so it spends no effort at all trying to convince you. Your job as a visitor is the simplest in the world: walk, eat, look up, and do it again.

The tower, from every angle

There is no sense pretending you came for anything else first. The tower keeps its floodlights on all evening, and on the hour it breaks into a shimmer of white lights for a few minutes, which it does whether anyone is watching or not, and which everyone stops for anyway.

The Eiffel Tower lit gold at night from Trocadero, its searchlight beam sweeping across the dark sky — The tower from Trocadéro after dark, floodlights and searchlight running.

Dinner that night was a terrace just around the corner. A cheese board with a small Rocamadour on it announcing itself well before we tasted it, a bowl of proper bistro frites, a negroni, and a glass of white. The tower stayed with us through the whole meal, framed between the plane trees across the road, and every hour it did its shimmer as if checking we were still there. We were.

A terrace table at night with a cheese board, a bowl of golden fries, a negroni and a glass of white wine, the lit Eiffel Tower visible between trees across the road — A terrace dinner near Trocadéro, the tower framed between the trees across the road.

Daylight asks for the other classic angle. From the Champ de Mars under a deep blue sky the tower stops being a postcard and turns into engineering: seven and a half thousand tons of riveted iron worked as fine as lace, every one of those rivets placed by somebody, and a queue underneath that curls right around the lawn. Red rental bikes go past on the path. People lie on the grass and look up at it the way you look at weather.

The Eiffel Tower in full daylight from the Champ de Mars, deep blue sky and white clouds behind, people and red rental bikes along the path — The Champ de Mars in full daylight, close enough to read the ironwork.

Montmartre at golden hour

Sacré-Cœur does something rare. It is a working basilica and the finest grandstand in the city at the same time, and by late afternoon the steps below it have filled into a full amphitheater, several hundred people sitting shoulder to shoulder facing outward to watch Paris change color. Somewhere in the middle there is always somebody with a guitar, because on a hill like this there always is, and nobody minds either way.

The white domes of Sacre-Coeur basilica above steps completely packed with hundreds of people sitting at dusk — The steps of Sacré-Cœur at dusk, filled end to end.

Turn around and you see what pulls everybody up here. All of Paris lies flattened out below the hill, zinc roofs running gray and even to the horizon with almost nothing tall enough to interrupt them, and one pink blossom tree showing off in the middle distance because it is spring and it has earned the right. People sat on the grass. Scooters idled on the corner. Nobody was in any hurry, and the season was doing most of the work.

The view over the rooftops of Paris from the Montmartre hillside, framed by bare tree branches, with people sitting on the grass below — The city from the Montmartre hillside, rooftops to the horizon.

The department store with a cathedral inside

Galeries Lafayette sells handbags, and it does it inside a Belle Époque monument. The rooftop is free to anyone who walks up, and it lines you up straight across the green copper roof of the Palais Garnier to the tower on the horizon, which by this point had started to feel like a familiar face turning up in every photograph.

Rooftop view over the ornate stone Palais Garnier opera house toward the Paris skyline, the Eiffel Tower on the horizon under dramatic clouds — The free rooftop, looking over the Palais Garnier to the tower beyond.

Inside is the real event. You walk in past the perfume counters, look up, and the building opens into a ten-story well of gilded balconies with a stained-glass dome closing it at the top, blue and gold, put there in 1912. On this visit somebody had hung sculpted figures on wires in the middle of that void, arms out, drifting slowly above the Dior and Chanel counters as though the whole building were quietly dreaming and the shoppers had not noticed.

The blue and gold stained-glass dome of Galeries Lafayette from below, a sculpted figure with outstretched arms suspended over the perfume hall balconies — The stained-glass dome and gilded balconies, with an art installation floating over the perfume hall.

Dinner at the counter

One dinner we booked purely for the counter seats. An open kitchen, three chefs in white shirts and navy aprons working the pass under a black heat lamp, plates staged in a row waiting to go. What sells those seats is the sound: the calls, the pans, and the easy mid-service laughter that tells you within about ninety seconds whether a place runs happy. This one did.

Three chefs in white shirts and navy aprons working and laughing in an open bistro kitchen, plates staged under a black heat lamp — Counter seats at the pass, the kitchen an arm's length away.

The food matched the mood. A black skillet of roasted potatoes and mushrooms under a peppered cream sauce, arriving still ticking. A stuffed chicken roulade sitting in a saffron-yellow jus with drops of orange oil across it and crisped ham shreds on top. Slices of steak, rosy in the middle, in a dark jus beside grilled asparagus piped with green herb cream and scattered with toasted crumbs. French bistro cooking exactly as it wants to be, which is to say generous, unhurried, and built almost entirely on butter.

A black skillet of roasted potatoes and mushrooms covered in a peppered cream sauce on a wooden table — Potatoes in cream, chicken roulade in saffron jus, and steak with asparagus.

A slice of stuffed chicken roulade topped with crisped ham shreds, sitting in a pale yellow sauce with drops of orange oil — Potatoes in cream, chicken roulade in saffron jus, and steak with asparagus.

The Seine on foot

The Seine through the middle of town runs between some of the finest walls in the city, and the best way to take it is slowly, on the lower quays where the traffic cannot reach you. Down the smaller arm past the Île de la Cité the water runs quick and green, the stone bridges line up one behind another into the distance, and the quays fill with people doing gloriously little.

The narrow arm of the Seine beside the Ile de la Cite under a gray sky, stone quays on both sides with walkers, an arched stone bridge ahead — The side channel of the Seine past the Île de la Cité, quays busy on both banks.

Notre-Dame is back. The towers are scrubbed to a pale gold, the west front reads sharp again, every carved figure over the doors legible from the square, and entry is carefully managed now with banners and a steady line feeding through. We paid our respects from the square along with a few thousand others. The cathedral spent hard years closed and rebuilding, and standing in a crowded square looking at it is a much better problem than the one before.

The freshly cleaned west facade of Notre-Dame cathedral with its twin towers and rose window, a dense crowd and reservation banners in the square below — The restored west front of Notre-Dame, the square full again.

Further along the river the fifteenth arrondissement breaks with the local consensus entirely. Back in the seventies it built itself a small Manhattan on the water, and the Beaugrenelle towers still stand there under big white clouds looking like they were delivered to the wrong address, with cruise boats moored along the bank beneath them. It is the one stretch of central Paris that belongs to a different city, and the river simply keeps going past it without comment.

High-rise towers of the Beaugrenelle district on the Seine under big white clouds, river cruise boats moored along the left bank — The Beaugrenelle towers on the Seine, Paris in a taller mood.

The Louvre, sampled

The Louvre cannot be finished, only sampled, and it is better to accept that at the door than to fight it for four hours. The courtyard sets the tone: a Renaissance palace the size of a small town with a glass pyramid set down in the middle, controversial when it went up in 1989 and loved ever since. From inside the entrance hall you look up through the same lattice at the sky, and around the corner in the mall the inverted pyramid hangs from the ceiling with its tip pointing down at a small stone pyramid on the floor, the two of them not quite touching.

A small glass pyramid of the Louvre in the granite courtyard, the palace facade with its dome and French flag behind under a gray sky — I. M. Pei's pyramid three ways: the same idea outside, overhead, and in.

Looking up through the glass and steel lattice of the Louvre pyramid at a cloudy sky from inside the entrance hall — I. M. Pei's pyramid three ways: the same idea outside, overhead, and in.

The piece that held me longest was not the one on the posters. In a room with dusty pink walls and a plaster frieze around the ceiling sits a seated Mars in black patinated bronze, larger than life, leaning forward with both arms down over one knee and a helmet in his hands. His shield is propped against the base in front of him, turned inward so you see the back of it, the two handle straps and the tassels, and a small winged figure crouches under his leg. The face is what does it. Curly hair, young, looking down and slightly away, and completely finished with the whole business of war. Even the shield has been turned around. I walked a slow lap and came back to the front twice.

Side view of the seated Mars in black patinated bronze, leaning forward with a helmet in his hands, his round shield propped inward against the base and a small winged figure beneath his leg, in a pink-walled Louvre gallery — The seated Mars, the piece I kept circling back to.

Further down the corridor the rose-granite Sphinx of Tanis crouches in a vaulted stone chamber after four and a half thousand years, and the Venus de Milo holds a pose in front of a red marble alcove that has now outlasted most of the empires that came to look at her. You shuffle past with everybody else, and every so often a room goes quiet on its own for no reason anyone could name. That hush is the museum doing its actual work.

The rose granite Sphinx of Tanis on a stone plinth in a vaulted stone chamber of the Louvre — The Sphinx of Tanis and the Venus de Milo, both older than almost everything around them.

The white marble Venus de Milo statue in front of a red marble alcove in the Louvre — The Sphinx of Tanis and the Venus de Milo, both older than almost everything around them.

From the top of an open-top bus

One afternoon we took the open-top bus, which is an unfashionable thing to do and was worth every minute of it. You sit above the traffic instead of in it, and the city arranges itself for you at a height it does not otherwise offer. The Arc de Triomphe comes up to eye level over the windscreen, wrapped in its stone record of old battles, while twelve lanes work the Étoile roundabout underneath in a piece of choreography with no written rules that somehow never stops flowing.

The Arc de Triomphe under a clear blue sky seen over the beige roof of an open-top tour bus, a plane tree at the right — The Arc de Triomphe at eye level from the top deck.

Place de la Concorde holds the oldest thing on the route by a wide margin: a three-thousand-year-old obelisk from Luxor, hieroglyphs running the whole height of the granite, a gold pyramid capping the top, standing on the exact spot where the Revolution kept its guillotine. Nothing on the square says so. Paris has a habit of setting very heavy history down in the middle of very pretty places and trusting you to feel the weight of it on your own.

The Luxor Obelisk with its gold pyramid cap at Place de la Concorde, hieroglyphs up its granite shaft, grand stone buildings and dramatic clouds behind — The Luxor Obelisk at Place de la Concorde, three thousand years old, on the site of the guillotine.

We came back past the Arc on foot at golden hour, when the limestone turns to honey and every single car on that roundabout drives quietly through somebody's photograph. Ours among them, several times over. A fair trade for a light like that.

The Arc de Triomphe glowing gold in low evening sun against a blue sky, cars circling the cobbled roundabout in front — Golden hour at the Étoile, the stone gone to honey.

The river at dusk

The river cruise had been on the list from the start and it earned its place immediately. You cast off in the last of the daylight, past the glass-roofed restaurant barges moored along the stone quay with their lamps already on, and the city starts switching itself on around you without hurrying, the way a room gets readied before people arrive.

A glass-sided restaurant barge glowing warmly against the stone quay of the Seine at dusk, bare trees and apartment buildings above — Setting off at dusk, the barges lighting up first.

Then the bridges begin, and from the water they are a completely different set of objects. The Pont Neuf, the oldest in the city despite a name that means new, comes over floodlit amber with each arch doubled exactly in the water underneath. The Pont Alexandre III arrives dressed for a state occasion, garlanded arches, ornate lamps, gilded winged horses up on granite pylons and the glass dome of the Grand Palais standing behind it. And the Pont des Arts crosses low and quiet with its lamps reflected in the dark, the tower a small distant glow through the ironwork.

The floodlit stone arches of the Pont Neuf reflecting gold in the Seine at dusk, illuminated buildings along the right bank — Three bridges from the water: the Pont Neuf, the Pont Alexandre III, and the Pont des Arts with the tower behind it.

The Pont Alexandre III with garlanded arches and ornate lampposts, gilded winged horse statues on its stone pylons, the glass dome of the Grand Palais behind — Three bridges from the water: the Pont Neuf, the Pont Alexandre III, and the Pont des Arts with the tower behind it.

The banks read like a shelf of institutions, one after another, each with its name lit over the door. The Monnaie de Paris slid past on its long neoclassical frontage, still minting coins after more than eight centuries, with barges tied up along the quay in front of it and a small red tug fussing along the channel.

The long neoclassical river facade of the Monnaie de Paris at dusk, barges moored along the quay and a small red tug boat passing on the Seine — The Monnaie de Paris, the national mint, minting since 864.

And then the finale arranges itself without anyone asking. At the turning point the tower comes up out of the water and fills the whole pale evening sky, iron from base to tip, river traffic idling underneath it. From down there you finally understand why it photographs the way it does. It was built to be looked at from exactly this spot, from the water, looking up.

The Eiffel Tower looming over a river boat kiosk from water level on the Seine at dusk, filling the pale evening sky — The turning point of the cruise, the tower filling the sky from the water.

The castle, and a sky that helped

Forty minutes on the RER and Paris hands you over to an entirely different world. Disneyland Paris got the pink castle, the one with real stained glass inside and a dragon in the basement, and on a spring day under enormous white weather it looked more like the cover of the storybook than like anything built out of concrete. The sky did about half the work that afternoon and asked for nothing.

The pink Sleeping Beauty Castle of Disneyland Paris with blue turrets and gold spires against a dark blue sky and towering white clouds — Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant, under a sky doing its best to help.

Frontierland, and the pirates next door

Frontierland runs the full western. A white paddle steamer called the Molly Brown does slow laps of the lake with Phantom Manor watching from the hill, and two real geese swam alongside it as though they had been cast. Out on its island, Big Thunder Mountain does red rock canyon properly, spires and ledges and a runaway mine train crossing the ridge, and that afternoon it had a genuine storm sky over it that no set designer would have dared ask for.

The white Molly Brown paddle steamer docked on the Rivers of the Far West, Phantom Manor on the hill behind and two geese swimming past — Frontierland: the Molly Brown on the lake, and Big Thunder Mountain under a storm sky.

The red rock spires of Big Thunder Mountain with a runaway mine train crossing the ridge, dark storm clouds overhead — Frontierland: the Molly Brown on the lake, and Big Thunder Mountain under a storm sky.

Next door, Adventureland keeps the pirates, and it commits. A full-rigged galleon lies at anchor with a mermaid figurehead over the water and a wrecked rowboat half sunk beside it, and the heavy gray cloud that rolled in improved the whole thing enormously. Across the lagoon, Skull Rock stares back with lit eyes and pours waterfalls out of its own mouth into green water.

The pirate galleon from the bow under heavy gray storm clouds, its mermaid figurehead over the lagoon and a wrecked rowboat in the water — The galleon under weather, and Skull Rock over the lagoon.

The skull-shaped rock formation of Adventureland with glowing eyes, waterfalls pouring from its mouth into a green lagoon — The galleon under weather, and Skull Rock over the lagoon.

The Avengers move in

Over in the Studios park the tone changes completely. A Hulkbuster the height of a house stands bolted into a yellow industrial gantry above a food court, red and gold, while people eat lunch underneath it without looking up. Around the corner a gray quinjet sits parked on a curved concrete ramp on a roof, and rising behind it, from an entirely different decade of the park, the tan bulk of the Hollywood Tower Hotel. Two eras of what a theme park thinks is thrilling, sharing a skyline.

The massive red and gold Hulkbuster armor standing in a yellow industrial gantry above a food court at Avengers Campus — Avengers Campus: the Hulkbuster in its gantry and the quinjet on the roof.

A gray quinjet parked on a curved concrete ramp at Avengers Campus, the tan tower of the Hollywood Tower Hotel rising behind — Avengers Campus: the Hulkbuster in its gantry and the quinjet on the roof.

Retro-future, and the way out

The section I liked best is the oldest idea in the place. Discoveryland stays loyal to Jules Verne, all bronze domes and rivets and gold orbital sculptures, and the Nautilus surfaces in its own lagoon halfway through a story nobody narrates to you. It is the one park of this kind I have seen that got retro-future right, and it never once breaks character to remind you what year it is.

Even the way out is landscaped. Fountains, lamp posts hung with flower baskets, pine branches framing the view, and the pink Disneyland Hotel spread above the gates, which means the last thing you see on the way home was arranged with the same care as the first thing you saw coming in.

The riveted bronze hull of the Nautilus submarine surfacing in the Discoveryland lagoon, steampunk towers and gold orbital sculptures behind — The Nautilus in its lagoon, and the gardens by the gates on the way out.

Fountains and flower-basket lampposts in the gardens outside the pink Disneyland Hotel, framed by pine branches — The Nautilus in its lagoon, and the gardens by the gates on the way out.

The tower earns the fuss. The museums are built to humble you and do it politely. The bistros fold their vegetables into cream out of something close to kindness, and the river runs the finest evening show in Europe for about the price of a ferry ticket. I would go back tomorrow. The cathedral queue and I still have unfinished business.