A Day of Line-Ups

Since we’ve already been in Paris for three days and haven’t seen the Eiffel Tower at all, we decided to start our day by trying to climb up the first and second level.  Try is the key word – apparently May 1 is Labor Day in Paris (and also a holiday in most of Europe) and everything is closed except for the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame so all the tourists go to these two sights!  The line-ups for the lift at the Tower were over 2 hours long and even the line-up to climb the stairs (which is normally pretty short) was over an hour wait! 

I don’t know about you, but standing in line for an hour to climb a tonne of stairs didn’t make sense to us, so we decided to eat lunch nearby and then go back to see if the line-ups had gotten any shorter.  We found a Romanian restaurant and took a leisurely hour and a half to eat, but when we returned the line-ups were just as long, so we decided to give up and head to Notre Dame, hoping that it would be slightly less crowded there.   

That was wishful thinking – Notre Dame de Paris is the official chair of the Archibishop of Paris and was one of the first Gothic cathedrals.  Although there are several Notre Dame cathedrals in Europe, Notre Dame de Paris is usually the one that comes to mind people talk about going to see Notre Dame (especially since it was featured in the world-famous book The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo).  Therefore it is normally a popular stop for tourists, and on a day when everything else is closed, it was almost as crazy as the crowds at the Eiffel Tower

After arguing for a bit about whether to line-up or not (I think it would have been about a 45 minute wait), we decided to leave and come back on a slightly less busy day.  I can’t believe it’s only May 1 and we’re hitting long line-ups of crowds – I wouldn’t want to be here during the most touristy months of the summer!  No wonder most Parisians hate tourists – yes we boost the economy but it really is unpleasant to have to fight your way through crowds all the time! Hopefully we’ll be in less touristy places during the travel high-season and I won’t have to face line-ups like this again for a while!