Following a week in Spain exploring Barcelona and San Sebastián, we moved onto the next leg of our trip in Paris, France.
We caught the Pesa bus from San Sebastián to Bilbao, and then boarded a mid-morning flight on Vueling Airlines from Bilbao to Paris. On arrival, we hired a taxi to the Canopy by Hilton Trocadero hotel which was a nice stay and optimally located in the 16th arrondissement with partial views of the Eiffel Tower from our room.
While planning this trip, it was difficult to decide where to stay in Paris. We found the major tourist landmarks to be quite dispersed, so I ended up just selecting a hotel that was moderately priced and where I could use my Amex travel credit. We were also situated right by a Metro station so found it fairly easy to navigate the city from here.
Le Marais twilight food tour
After settling in at the hotel, we headed over to Le Marais for a food tour we had booked with Eating Europe. We left a bit later than we should have and got caught in a Metro delay, so rushed into an Uber but got stuck in traffic. Fortunately, I was able to call the Eating Europe office and they connected us with our guide to arrange for us to meet at the next tour stop. We made it in the nick of time and didn’t end up missing anything.
Our specific tour was the “Le Marais Twilight Food Tour” which I do not see in their current tour listings, but we’ve been on several tours with Eating Europe previously (in Italy) and I can vouch that they are top notch.
Le Marais in the 4th arrondissement is a hip neighbourhood that was once the city’s Jewish quarter.
Our small group food tour took us through several delicious spots, my favourite of which were Cafe Hugo for the escargot and Boulangerie Murciano for the “cigar” pastry with ground almond filling. We also really enjoyed the falafels at Mi-Va-Mi and the kouign-amanns at Maison Georges Larnicol, and ended up returning to both places later in the week for another taste.
The Eiffel Tower by night
Our tour finished up around 7 pm and we took the Metro back to our hotel to relax for a bit. At 10:30 pm we had reservations to go up the Eiffel Tower.
Despite the late hour, it was still very crowded in the area and we were amused to observe the multitude of photo shoots happening around the tower. We had tickets for the lift to the top so packed ourselves into the elevator and rode up for windy views of Paris by night.
I actually found it cooler to see the Eiffel Tower close up from below after we came back down.
That was a wrap for our first evening in Paris. More to come tomorrow!
I've Bean Travelling 
Leave a comment