I've Bean Travelling

We had one final half day in Paris before our departure onward to London. We’d had a busy few days exploring the city on a food tour and sightseeing along the River Seine, as well as taking day trips to Versailles and Giverny.

Appreciating art at the Louvre

For our final look at Paris, we planned a visit to the Musée du Louvre. Following the recommendations of other travellers, we had pre-purchased our tickets for timed entry in the morning. As expected, it was already quite crowded.

On arrival, we were greeted by a view of the iconic Louvre Pyramid. Designed by Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei in 1983, the Pyramid and the underground lobby beneath were created as part of an expansion to handle the increasing numbers of visitors to the museum. Visitors entering through the Pyramid descend into the spacious lobby and then ascend into the main buildings.

This famed national art museum is best known as home to some of the most canonical works of Western art, including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, where we made our first stop. Of course, every other visitor had the same plan.

Fortunately, the piece is blocked off by barriers to allow for a semblance of orderliness and a queue to view the painting up close.

The remainder of the museum is expansive and could be explored over several days. We spent a couple hours looking around and only managed to get through a small selection of exhibits.

Goodbye Paris, hello London

On the way back to the hotel, we returned to La Patisserie Cyril Lignac to pick up some pastries for the road. Then we stopped at the Trocadero again for a final glimpse of the Eiffel Tower by day.

In late afternoon, we prepared for our departure from Paris. We boarded the Eurostar train from Paris Gare du Nord, which would take us across the Channel Tunnel (“Chunnel”) to London St. Pancras station. The trip took us about 1.5 hours, with our arrival in London in early evening.

Upon arrival, we hired a taxi from the train station and checked in at The Marylebone Hotel. Our room here was teeny but adequate for our short stay.

For dinner, we finally had our highly anticipated meal at Dishoom in Soho. We had been dreaming about their biryani for the past year since our last trip to London, and it was worth the wait.

A recap of our day in London coming up next.