my big adventure - john's living room

The whole reason John chose to go to Paris was to see the Eiffel Tower, so of course that's the first thing we did. As we approached the Tower, we saw that the lines were very long. There was a line at each of the four legs our the tower. We followed the snaking line to the end and saw that the other leg's line was a little bit shorter, so we quickly got in it. Even though it was more expensive, we had decided to take the elevator up the tower instead of climbing the stairs because of mom's knee. As our line inched closer to the ticket booth, we noticed some people in front of us disgustedly got out of line. Then some more people did the same. I began to wonder if it wasn't just because they were impatient. I examined the ticket booth for a clue to what might have caused them to get out of line and saw that it was the line for only the stairs. "Mom, this line doesn't have an elevator," I told her. "Sure it does," she said, "look, it says escalator." I looked closer. Then I looked at the other ticket booths. "Mom," I said, "I think 'escaliers' means stairs not escalator." So we walked up to the first level, stopping every once in a while to catch our breath. John didn't need to, he was bounding up the stairs, excitedly telling us how many stairs we'd climbed so far. The first level came after three-hundred-forty-seven steps. Mom stopped there and waited while John and I climbed to the second level, six-hundred-seventy-four steps high. We took in the sights, took a few pictures, then went back to the first floor because John was most interested in taking pictures of the fake worker guys on the tower. We ate lunch with the pigeons there at the over priced cafe on the deck of the first level. Later John said that was his favorite part of the day. "It felt like the Eiffel Tower was my living room and I was just relaxing, eating in it."