10 Things Every American Should Know About Visiting the Eiffel Tower

Whether it’s just a side trip during the Olympic Games or the highlight of your trip to Paris, the Eiffel Tower is on pretty much everyone’s bucket list, making it both the world’s most cliched tourist visit and something you feel like you have to do … but is also actually worth doing.

Here’s what you have to know about visiting the Eiffel Tower. (Besides: Everyone speaks English.)

1. You Should Buy Tickets Early

You can’t dilly-dally when it comes to buying your tickets to the Eiffel Tower, as it’s the most visited ticketed monument in the world. Get on the official Eiffel Tower website much earlier than you think — weeks in advance, not days — if you just want the basic Eiffel experience, which means access to only the first floor (the floor between the ground level and the top) and only via the stairs.

If you want to take an elevator from the ground floor to the second floor or buy tickets to the summit, you need to book even earlier — months, not weeks. The same goes for the guided tours.

Before you finalize your ticket purchase, you have to enter the names of every person using a ticket. Someone at the tower will check the names against the tickets before they let you go up, even if you’re just taking the stairs.

If you don’t intend to actually go up the tower, you don’t have to buy tickets at all. The gardens and everything else at the base of the tower are free to the public.

2. Getting to the Eiffel Tower Is Easy, but the Paris Metro Tries To Make It Hard

The Eiffel Tower is central to the city and well-connected by public transportation. That and the fact that it is the tallest and most striking structure in the city make it almost impossible not to find.

But the Metro, the backwards and byzantine Paris underground train system, seems to try to make getting anywhere harder than it needs to be, thanks to the zone system, parallel but technically separate rail systems (the Paris Metro, for zones 1 to 3, and the Réseau Express Régional, or RER, for zones 1 to 5, though both are managed by the Régie autonome des transports parisiens, or RATP), confusing or nonexistent explanations, too-few machines, machines that always seem to break down, and on and on.

On a recent weeklong trip, for example, there were lines for tickets at every station we went to because every station had at least 1 ticket machine that was broken or being serviced.

This will forever be my takeaway image of the Paris Metro system:

And, yes, I know that’s technically a machine in the Versailles Château Rive Gauche station, but you get the idea.

Hot Tip:

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3. You Have To Go Through Security Twice To Go Up

Yes, you have to line up for a security check and metal detector before you can get into the tower premises, and, yes, it can take a while. You’re allowed bags smaller than 15.7 x 7.9 x 21.7 inches, but you can’t bring in luggage or larger bags — there is no bag check here. You can’t bring in the obvious items, either: weapons, sharp objects, flammable material, glass containers, or alcohol.

If you’re actually going up the tower, you’ll go through security again, and that screening has a bag check.

4. There’s More to the Tower Than the Tower

If you’re not going up the tower, there’s actually enough to do on the ground floor to keep you busy while the rest of your party makes the climb. The gardens are surprisingly (or perhaps not surprisingly, since this is the French we’re talking about) lovely and large, and there are food and drink kiosks and other comforts without you having to take a single step up. Remember: As long as you’re not going up the tower, it’s totally free!

And even from terra firma, you get an awe-inspiring, even dizzying, look at the fantastic ironwork and detail that went into this architectural marvel.

5. You Should Be Prepared for Crowds

Even in the off-season or shoulder season, brace yourself for serious crowds. The tower is, after all, consistently one of the 10 most visited places in the world, and there’s never really a quiet day there.

Be prepared for a few elbows, lots of lines, and strangers in almost every photograph.

6. The Stairs Are No Joke

There are 327 steps from the ground level to the first floor, then 347 steps to the second floor. There are 1,665 steps from the ground floor to the summit, but the staircase from the second floor to the top is closed to the public for safety reasons.

The climb up to the lower floors can be a workout even for the moderately fit, and only 2 of the young children in our group made it up to the second floor without breaking a sweat or having to catch their breath. (Even the young athlete in our group ended up taking it slowly halfway into the climb.)

Expect to spend about 30 to 40 minutes going up and a little less on the way down.

Acrophobic? Be aware that seeing through the scaffolding down to the ground is mostly unavoidable and that the railings may not feel all that comfortable or sturdy at all times, even though the structure is perfectly sound and safe.

7. You Can Eat Inside the Eiffel Tower

There’s a restaurant on the first floor and another on the second floor of the tower.

Madame Brasserie is on the first floor, so you can climb up to it or take an elevator if you have mobility issues. It technically takes walk-ins, but in reality you need to make your reservation for the restaurant well in advance of your visit to the tower. Even The Platinum Card^® from American Express concierge couldn’t swing a table for me a couple of weeks in advance in April (shoulder season for Paris).

Le Jules Verne, the 2-Michelin-starred restaurant on the second floor, has a dedicated elevator that whisks you from the ground level to the top and back down again. It also requires reservations way in advance — we have friends who’ve lived in Paris for over a decade and only managed to snag a table once.

If you can’t get a table in the tower but are famished at the end of your first climb, you can buy macarons, pastries, drinks, or sandwiches at the snack shop on the first floor. There’s another snack shop on the second floor waiting for you after your even longer climb to that level.

There’s also a Champagne bar at the summit of the tower. You can add a glass of Champagne to your ticket to the summit through the Eiffel Tower website.

8. There Are Toilets (and Cheesy Eiffel Tower Souvenirs) on the First Floor

After slogging up 327 steps, it’d be understandable if you needed a bathroom break. And, no, you won’t have to turn right back around and madly barrel down 327 stairs to pee — there are restrooms on the first floor, along with that snack shop and, yes, an Eiffel Tower gift shop with those miniature Eiffel Towers you can give to your fifth-favorite cousins for Christmas.

There are bathrooms on the second floor and summit, too, as well as diaper-changing rooms on all floors except the very top.

9. You Really Do Get the Best Views of Paris From the Tower

As the tallest thing in the city of Paris, and as a basically see-through structure (by acrophobe standards), the Eiffel Tower does, indeed, offer views of the City of Light that make the climb up worth it.

During our visit in April with local friends, we got a clear look at the Olympic volleyball courts being set up for the Olympics in the Champ de Mars, could make out the tourists across the Seine staring back at us on the Trocadero, and landmarks like Les Invalides, Montmartre, Notre Dame, the Louvre, and Grand Palais — and we didn’t even get to go to the top of the tower! One of our friends even found and pointed out the crèche we used to pick her up from when she was a toddler.

One iconic Paris landmark you won’t get an amazing views of? The Eiffel Tower, for obvious reasons.

10. There’s Plenty To Do and Eat Nearby That Isn’t a Tourist Trap

Once you’re back down on the ground and figuring out what to do next, don’t feel like you have to escape the area. Unlike, say, Times Square in New York City, you haven’t just emerged into a 100%-guaranteed-tourist-trap blast zone. The 7th arrondissement is, obviously, full of tourists and gets more than its share of touts, souvenir shops, and overpriced restaurants, but it’s also a place locals live in and frequent and don’t feel like they have to go out of their way to avoid except with when entertaining out-of-town friends on their first visit to the city.

You also get wonderful views of the Eiffel Tower closer up, framed by the local architecture.

Final Thoughts

The Eiffel Tower is the ultimate tourist cliche, but it’s become a cliche for a reason. The next time your friends or family say they want to go up, you’d be missing out if you didn’t turn into the skid and find out why.

Once you’ve come down from the tower, you may be able to appreciate French craftsmanship, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s revolutionary urban planning ideas, and the fact that, sometimes, tourist mobs get it right.

Wind down from the thrill (and muscle burn) of your ascent and descent, settle in for a coffee or a pastry somewhere (after checking the prices on the menu outside, of course), and take in the street life at the pace of a Parisian, knowing that you’ve crossed a biggie off your bucket list and don’t have to climb up and down 674 137-year-old stairs again anytime soon.

Just don’t go home wearing a beret, because that always looks ridiculous.