La Tour Eiffel

When visiting Paris, it's hard to resist the draw of another visit to the Eiffel Tower. Play word association with any child that's into their books and "Paris?" will get a response of "Eiffel Tower", much as "Dinosaur?" would get "Barney". Littl'un recognised the towering iron structure without any prompting as it appeared out of nowhere between a couple of trees. But to my surprise - and slight relief - she had no desire to go up to the top. Sitting in her push chair, she leant back and took in the view from the ground. And then scoffed a strawberry-flavoured ice cream while hundreds of tourists and school groups milled around the base.

But while the shape of the tower is instantly recognisable, for me its beauty and fascination is in the detail of the iron work, the girders and mesh that keep it safe in the air.

And every time I see it, my mind casts back to a 1970s film starring Roger Moore that invoved a terrorist group taking over the tower - can't figure out the name, and I could be wrong about the details, but I remember lasers and a beginning set in a training camp up in the far north of Scotland. But perhaps the best photographs I have of the Eiffel Tower are from a previous visit in March 2003, like the one below.