Get an Eiffel of this mess!

What’s more high-class than hopping a plane and heading to beautiful Paris, the City of Lights?  And if you’re in Paris, of course you must visit the iconic Eiffel Tower.

Or maybe it’s better to look at from afar.

According to data collected from TripAdvisor, the iconic Paris landmark is the world’s most complained about tourist attraction.  People wrote close to 20,000 negative reviews about the Eiffel Tower.  The complaints ranged from “everything is dirty” to “the place is filled with rats.”

Now I’ve never been to the Eiffel Tower or even close, but I’m surprised to hear how similar it might be to a landmark I have seen.  When I was in St. Louis, I thought, surely I have to visit the Arch!

For those of you who’ve never been there, you might wonder, how does one ride to the top of an arch? Basically they have these little pods that hang so that as you travel up the curved arch, the pod stays straight up and down.

So what was the problem?  Let me count the ways:

1. The pods were tiny.  So you sit in this little capsule all the way up.
2. There’s absolutely nothing to look at on your way up or down!  You’re sitting crunched into a tiny dirty capsule, looking through little windows at dingy gray walls and a few exit signs.  What a missed opportunity!  They could’ve had murals of Lewis & Clark or something so it would feel like the fun actually started when you get in the pod!
3. For someone from Chicago, it’s really not that high at the top.  And basically what you look at (through tiny windows) is the river and the casino.
4. It’s not that thick of an arch, so when the wind blows, you kind of feel like anytime, it could topple and splat!

Maybe you’re better off sticking with the Sydney Opera House.  That’s among the spots with the least amount of complaints.

Come to think of it, maybe I did see a rat in the Arch.