However I kind of wish I hadn't. First of all there were about a million people trying to sell you shitty Eiffel Tower souvenirs which I knew there would be from last time, but this time they were EVERYWHERE and even walking up to you under the Eiffel Tower. Like back up and get out of my grill mister. They made me feel really unsafe.
Also there were several people with clipboards (never a good sign) trying to get people to donate money to a charity. So these people were all mute and so just shoved the clipboard infront of you after they spotted you and launched themselves at you. I was so not interested and even wondered if they actually were mute because how hard would it be to pretend? And they had no identification on them saying that they were from this certain place, but what they did have was heaps of people's signatures and their money.
So between the men rattaling the chains at me and every deaf and mute Parisian chashing me down I was totally happy to get away from that place. Just after the Tower is a park thing where I thought I could take some refuge - not so. There were a group of these three African guys who looked dodgey as hell and were standing in the middle of the park and stopping people as they walked past, trying to get money out of them. Because they travelled in a pack it was pretty full on. Anyway as soon as I saw them I tried to walk as far in the opposite direction to aviod them while still getting to where I needed to go.
It was such a bad experience of Paris' most popular tourist attraction, which is a shame because so many other tourists must encounter the same set of characters. The thing that I found amazing was that the numerous police and even soldiers that patrol the Eiffel Tower were happy just to walk past and let tourists get harrased by these people. Being at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower during the middle of the day was the unsafest I felt in Paris.
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