Live from the Eiffel Tower

During our second to last weekend before we left for Aix-en-Provence, we had a ritzy mass group dinner at a restaurant called Altitude 95 on the second floor of the Eiffel Tower! We all got nice and dressed up and met underneath the Eiffel Tower. We took a glass elevator up the side of the tower and stopped on the second floor and found ourselves high above the tiny tiny people walking on the ground. It was just about sunset as we sat down at our tables in the restaurant, with our apéritif of kir, cassis with white wine, waiting for us. We then quickly got served a delicious appetizer of cherry tomatoes with mozzarella, fresh basil and olive oil with red wine to last us the entire dinner, of course. We had plenty of time to talk, in French of course! and enjoy the view of Paris that we could see out the windows! Everyone looked lovely all made up and clean and smartly dressed, very nice for our last big dinner out in Paris!
The rest of the dinner was also PHENOMENAL, especially the dessert. It was a chocolate cake with chocolate fondant inside, a scoop of vanilla ice cream and pieces of toffee sprinkled across it. Yum. We got rushed out of the restaurant pretty quickly because another group was coming in right after us to take our seats.

And when we went outside, there was a lovely surprise awaiting us! While we were eating, it had turned from dusk to night and the Eiffel Tower was now illuminated entirely in blue with a magnificent view of the sparkling city of Paris below us. This was also around the time that the Eiffel Tower got all lovey-dovey, mushy, coupley. *sniffle*
However, Megan, Sam, Claire, Steph and I decided to brave the overwhelming smoochiness and romance of the place and go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower! We took the stairs up to the 3rd floor and then took an elevator up to the very tippy tippy top. We had to spend an hour in line to take the elevator, but we had plenty of tricks up our sleeves that would quickly pass the time: singing songs..probably way too loud, dancing in a contained manner (does that make any sense? as in not like flailing around), taking pictures, battling with some ridiculous family that tried to cut the line. It was a grand old time. But FINALLY, we got to the top. Aaaaand there was a gorgeous almost-full moon in the sky.

All in all, a wonderful evening with some wonderful friends :)