Learn English – Is it appropriate to say “I’ve never been” when referring to a place, omitting the adverb “there” from the phrase

The correct form of your example:

It’s all about apples, oranges, bananas, etc.

Jack Lynch’s Guide to Grammar and Style states:

This one is simple enough: never double up periods. If a statement ends with “etc.” the period in the abbreviation does double duty, serving as the full stop to end the sentence. If, however, you need another mark of punctuation after an abbreviation, you can put it after the period. So:

• This was her first trip to the U.S.
  (The period does double-duty, ending both the abbreviation and the sentence.)
• Is this your first trip to the U.S.?
  (The period ends the abbreviation, but the question mark ends the sentence.)
• On her first trip to the U.S., Kristina lost her passport.
  (The period ends the abbreviation, but the sentence keeps going after the comma.)

The only thing to remember: don't double the periods. Everything else is logical enough.

This is a way of saying, "if you believe that, you are gullible enough to believe most anything" (and the speaker should therefore capitalize by making themselves lots of money off of you). Basically, you are so gullible that you are vulnerable out in public. The idea here is that somebody could trick (scam) you by selling something they don't own. Generally something that only a very gullible person would fall for.

Typically (in the USA at least) its either "a bridge", or "The Brooklyn Bridge". However, any large landmark the speaker obviously doesn't own would do as a stand-in.

The landmark in question is often modified to match the situation a bit, just to be cute. In this case, the person in question is French, so the one French landmark a typcial New York Times reader would know about (the Eiffel Tower) was used.