A is the first letter of the Latin alphabet, which makes it a logical starting point for a blog titled “Letters From Paris (And Other Missives)”.
Coincidentally, the most famous landmark of Paris also looks like the letter A.

So let the Eiffel Tower be my first letter from Paris. There will be more, and there will be other missives, as my title promises. I have lived in Paris for almost twenty years now, and my husband is a born-and-bred Parisian and a history buff to boot. Some time ago, a Canadian friend’s college-aged son was in town, and we treated him to a 13km unstructured history walk through parts of the Right Bank. This city is full of bits and pieces of history, even more fascinating for a North American, where a good part of man-made sights are a few hundred years old at the most.
Should I give you a chronological tour of Paris, go back to the pre-Roman conquest settlement on the river islands? Or should I start with some basic Paris geography?
I’ll do neither, but instead stick to my A as in Eiffel Tower and begin with a few fun facts on the Iron Lady, la Dame de Fer, as she (in French, a tower is female) is lovingly called.

Did you know that…

• if you laid the Eiffel Tower down, it would just fit onto the Mars Field behind it?
• the Eiffel Tower does not sit astride over a street (as I mistakenly thought up until my first visit)?
• you can climb up to the second floor in the staircase in one of the pillars, and that the steps are numbered?