Writers Without Boarders

The first time I saw the Eiffel Tower it looked cold. A grey sky sent raindrops that wash the streets clean and pooled in the gutter washing pedals from the budding trees and cigarette butts dancing down the side of the road. The sidewalks were empty, the tourist kept inside by the rain sitting in hotel rooms and in the café’s that lined the street. I walked alone on the sidewalk, as cars rushed past spraying water, clean and mechanical, entirely detached, they provided no company. It stood alone, tessellations of iron rising above the historic Parisian skyline. It juts up, cutting a straight line into the grey sky. It looked so much calmer than the images printed on t-shirts, and canvas bag in every tourist shop in the city. While the city moves around it, endless streams of people and traffic, the Eiffel Tower stood motionless.
In the center of Paris every sign is written in French with an English translation below, all of the waiters and cashiers speak both languages fluently. After the first two days I quit my struggle with French, and expectantly used English at every interaction.
I have been in the Paris for five days now, staying in a hostel on the south side of city, a place that is surprisingly clean for the 10 euros I pay for each night. Each morning I have walked to the Porte de Vannes metro station. Porte de Vannes, a name that I do not know how to pronounce, only how to recognize it on the Metro map, that shows the city as a series of smooth brightly colored intersecting lines. Each line is neatly assigned its own color and a number. Porte de Vannes sits near the bottom of the map on a teal colored line that weaves its way across the diagram, bearing the number thirteen.
The morning of my third day in the city I decided to climb the tower. Even on a clear day you can only see so far from the top. After a couple miles in each direction the city fades into a blue haze of smog. A small stall at the top sells cheap champagne at a high price. People enjoy the limited view sipping it out of plastic flutes slowly shuffling around all four sides of the tower. I look to the south but I cannot see the hostel near Port de Vannes as the building of Paris disintegrates into a grey blue sky.