101 Things - Number 22

Kiss A Gorgeous Girl Under The Eiffel Tower

Her legs were actually shaking; I wish I could say it was due to the allure of her lips close to mine, or the threat of sweet romance in the city of love. But no. It was actually due to two factors; she had chosen to wear shorts on a day that can only be described as close to Baltic cold, and we had just been to the top of the Eiffel Tower and back down again, and our main mode of transport had been feet on steps. Hence the wobbling legs.
It had been a great day so far, we had walked and playfought along the Seine, waltzed through the entrance to the Louve and been refused admission to a holy church for being inappropriate. And to top it all off I was going to complete the first of many, well 101 tasks, on my list.
Finding the girl had been easy, but getting there had been harder, it’s not easy to find the Eiffel Tower you know. 315 metres of steel can be easily mistaken for a . . . telephone pole.
But I had gotten so carried away with the lifesize models of Thomas Edison and Mr Eiffel atop of the tower in a makeshift room, that I completely forgot that we had come here for another reason as well.
“So, are we going to take a picture at the bottom of us kissing for evidence?” asked Jess.
“Hmmm?” I answered elegantly as I struggled to look away from Mr Edison; do you really think he had a moustache that large?
“A photo, at the bottom, for your list”
“Ah, the list” I tried to cover up my tracks and complete lack of recollection of the task, “Yes”
“You’d forgotten hadn’t you?”
Better to admit failure and gain respect through humility I thought, “No”
So after the trip to the bottom of the Tower, upon which my companion admitted to having “jelly legs”, we were in position. But there is a slight problem when such a great pressure is placed upon you, and the first of one hundred items on a list is about to be ticked off – you find it very funny.
After what seemed like a hundred attempts to kiss, and fail, we looked one another in the eye and we knew the time for smiles and laughter we over; we were in the realm of ambition here, in the city of love and in the cradle of the most romantic steel structures in the world.
So as I swept Jess off her feet and leaned in to kiss her like she’d never been kissed before, only one thing entered my mind, the fact the Parisians call the Eiffel tower the ‘Steel Aubergine’.
The kiss doesn’t go to plan, because I drop her when laughing too loud. This is my written apology, sorry.