Underneath the Eiffel Tower

Note: To understand the story from the beginning click here.

It’s been a week since I have written anything. It’s been a busy week. A good week yes, but I have to say that I really missed this. I’ve missed it a lot.
At the beginning of my last post I had mentioned my fear of chatting to randoms on a train. Now, to be honest I actually chatted to a lovely girl from Newcastle to Darlington on the way back to Londres! Consider that me eating my words.

This links nicely to my next story; a story of when talking to people you don’t know can be a very positive thing. I hand delivered a postcard. This was the one and only time I spoke to someone, rather than leaving it to be found. We had been frantically writing postcards in a café (as usual) after a stop at the beautiful Arc de Triomphe.

From the Arc de Triomphe, we walked to Le Tour Eiffel (otherwise known as the Eiffel Tower, suprisingly). Many people had told us that we should book tickets in advance to guarantee getting up there. Great advice. With a not-so-set itinerary we figured we’d gamble it, though. We lost. As we got closer we realised that the queues went on for miles. It wasn’t ideal but the girls with me wandered on, as I scuttered about wondering where I could leave a postcard. I had to leave a postcard.

I was struggling. I wasn’t sure what to do. Angry at myself that I hadn’t thought this through well enough, I started to give up and head to meet the others. As I strolled past three girls together I couldn’t help but wonder if it was worth asking for their help. OK, so it wasn’t leaving a postcard on a bench or anything but I had to try, right? They looked very friendly but I was more than ready for them to tell me to get lost – I was a girl on her own, hanging out at the Eiffel Tower with a postcard in my hand – they may think I was nuts, understandably.

When I approached them, I was greeted with warm smiles and I breathed a sigh of relief to find that they were English. My GSCE French was being pushed as it was – trying to explain the postcard would have been tough. I didn’t talk for long – simply told them that if they were going up to the top of the tower, I would like them to take it with them. As I walked away, I looked back to see the girls gathered around and reading the message. It was at this point that I started to choke up. I knew for sure they had read it; that they knew why I was there and what it meant to me.

I found my friends and I told them about what had just happened. I explained how I had a good feeling about this one, about how the connection of handing it to them in person made me feel as though there was more chance of hearing something back.

My instinct was right. The English girls did come back to me….