London, England and Paris, France – March 2022

March 17, 2022 – April 5, 2022

Where We Stayed:

Hyatt Place London City East

Gainsborough Bath Spa

Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome

Hyatt House Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport

Trip Highlights:

• Our first trip to London
• Seeing the London sights
• A spa afternoon in Bath
• Disneyland Paris

Favorite Restaurants:

• Hoop & Grapes
• The Mayflower
• The Astronomer
• Noglu
• Pierre Herme

After COVID brought our initial trip plans to a halt several times, we were finally able to make our long-awaited trip to London.

Travel to London

Our travel to London had a bit of a rocky start. The evening before our flights, we received a notification that our first flight of the day, a quick 30 minute flight from Milwaukee to Chicago, would be delayed and cause us to miss our connection in Chicago to Toronto (from Toronto we were supposed to fly to London). We called the airline, hoping to get on a different flight to Chicago or change our flight to Toronto, but in the process of talking to the customer support agent, everything went wrong. At the end of the first call, somehow Sam and I were on completely different itineraries (as his flight had been changed without his permission). Calling customer support back seemed to do little to help.

We ended up on calls with customer support until 4 a.m. Finally, after our flights were fixed, we realized that there was something strange in our reservation that was preventing us from checking in online. Not wanting to take any more risks, we drove to the Milwaukee airport at 4:30 a.m. and checked in at the ticket counter instead. Finally, at 6 a.m., our boarding passes were in hand and we had confirmed seats on a flight from Newark to London leaving that evening. We got a couple hours of sleep, before returning to the airport to catch our flight to Newark.

Newark to London

The one upside of our crazy first day of travel is that we were able to check out the Polaris lounge at the Newark airport, one of the nicest airport lounges in the U.S. It was pretty great, and we spent about 5 hours sitting, drinking champagne, and watching the massive international planes get loaded up outside the window.

Before long, it was time to board our plane to London. We were lucky enough to get business class for this flight, both of our first experiences flying in a lie-flat pod. It was a very cloudy night, and one cool sight as we took of from Newark was the lights and skyscrapers of New York City in the distance punching out over the top of the cloud line. We enjoyed a dinner at midnight (one of the strange things about boarding a plane at 11 p.m.) and drifted off to sleep before arriving in London the next morning.

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London, England

Staying Awake in London

We were finally in London! Sam had been lucky to get a decent amount of sleep on the plane. I wasn’t as lucky. But, the adrenaline of finally being in London helped to keep me awake. Our first day, we trekked into central London and checked in to our hotel before walking to a nearby Nando’s for lunch.

We concluded our first day by getting on one of London’s classic double-decker busses and taking a spot at the very front of the top floor. We chose a bus route that traversed some of London’s classic sights, including Big Ben and Trafalgar Square. Eventually, we both started to get a little sleepy, so we crashed early at our hotel, ready to take on the city for real the next day.

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Westminster Walking Tour

Our first stop on our first full day in London was a walking tour of the Westminster area. Here, we saw many of the main sights, including Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Downing Street, and Big Ben. Our guide was great at telling stories about the royals and the history of the places we passed.

We ended our tour at Trafalgar Square, and asked our guide for at tip on a lunch place nearby. She recommended a pub across the street called The Admiralty, which we really enjoyed.

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The British Museum

That afternoon brought us to The British Museum, home to many important historical artifacts that England has stolen from other cultures. I had mixed feelings about this place. On one hand, I thought it was fascinating that in a single museum you could see The Rosetta Stone, Statues from the Pantheon, Egyptian Mummies, and many other greatly important pieces of history.

On the other hand, most of the objects in this museum were taken from their home cultures by the English, many in the days of colonialism or otherwise by force. My biggest issue, is that the home countries of many of these items asked for the items to be returned to them, and The British Museum has refused to do so. The Easter Island sculpture had a note about how those currently living on Easter Island considered the sculptures to be incredibly important religiously, and requested several years ago that the statue be returned. The museum did not do so. It doesn’t feel great to support a place that treats others’ culture like that.

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Victoria and Albert Museum

Our second full day in London began at the Victoria and Albert Museum. This museum was a great eclectic mix of different artifacts. It contained everything form some of the original costumes from popular West End musicals, to casts of some of the great historical artifacts located all over the world, including a cast of the statue of David. We spend several hours wandering through this museum before getting lunch at a burger place down the street.

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Exploring the City of London

Our afternoon was spent wandering around the City of London. The City of London refers to the historical area of London, much of which was burnt by the fire of London and bombed in World War II. We visited the giant monument column honoring all that was lost in the fire of London and a park built around a bombed WWII church.

We also wandered through Leadenhall Market. While most of the market was closed, Leadenhall Market was used as a filming location for Diagon Alley in the first two Harry Potter movies, so we ran into several other Harry Potter fans visiting the area even when the market was closed. The original filming location of The Leaky Cauldron pub is now a migraine clinic, but we were able to track that down as well. Our evening was spent at our favorite pub near our hotel, The Hoop and Grapes.

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The Tower of London

Our third day began at The Tower of London, the giant historic fortress in the center of London. Much of the tower has been preserved as a museum, explaining its history and purpose that it’s held over time. It’s also the location of England’s crown jewels, kept in a separate museum within the tower grounds.

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Camden Market

Lunch this day was at Camden Market, a bustling food market in the Camden neighborhood. This was one of the busiest places we had been this far on our trip, but we both really enjoyed the food and would love to spend more time in Camden on a future trip.

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King’s Cross & The Mayflower

On our way back to our hotel, we stopped at King’s Cross station and visited another iconic Harry Potter location: Platform 9 3/4. While there isn’t a barrier between the actual platforms nine and ten in the station, they had set up a fun photo opp near the Harry Potter gift store at the station.

For dinner, we ventured out of central London, across the Thames, to the Mayflower pub. This pub was located right on the water overlooking central London at the location where the Mayflower ship was docked before it set sail to America. Sam had a great plate of fish and chips while I enjoyed a salmon dinner sitting outside near the water.

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The London Transport Museum

Continuing our trend of beginning each day at a new museum, the following day began at The London Transport museum. This museum was dedicated to all things transportation, including historical horse and carriage streetcars, the original trains that ran on the London Underground, and the history of London’s famous double-decker busses. Sam has fond memories of visiting this museum as a child, and I really enjoyed walking through here as well.

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Doctor Who & Sam’s Old Neighborhood

We spent the early afternoon wandering around the neighborhood Sam had lived in when he was a student in London. On the way, we stopped at the famous Doctor Who police box on the streets of central London, which was fun to see. After an early dinner at The Astronomer, a astronomical themed pub near our hotel, we spent a few hours resting before heading out for the concert that evening.

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Hans Zimmer Concert

Our evening was spent at the Hans Zimmer concert at the O2 arena. Hans Zimmer, a famous composer of movie music, brought a full orchestra to perform many of his famous songs, including the themes from Pirates of the Carribean and some songs from The Lion King. We hadn’t anticipated that this concert would be as much like a rock concert as it was, but we had a great time!

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Bath, England

We packed up from our London hotel and made our way by train to the town of Bath. Bath is known for the ancient Roman baths that were discovered there as well as the natural hot springs that feed many saunas and hot tubs throughout the town.

Lunch and Exploring Bath

After the two hour train ride, we checked into our hotel and headed out for a quick lunch at Bill’s. We spent a couple hours wandering around the little town. One of the famous buildings in Bath is called The Royal Crescent, a massive half-circle curved building that dates back to the 1700s.

Our hotel had its own modern version of the old Roman Baths, which we were allowed to use for two hours during our stay. There were several rooms with different hot tubs, each at a different temperature. The one, large hot tub in the center had different corners with benches and jets at varying locations to work out knots in different areas of the body. It was also attached to a sauna, a steam room, a heat lamp room, and a cold room that had crushed ice to cool you down after spending time in the sauna. They also provided free hot chocolate, which was a historical treat given out in Bath when visiting the bath house. It was a fun, and very relaxing, experience.

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The Roman Baths

Before leaving Bath the next day, we stopped by the main attraction: The Roman Baths. These ancient Roman baths have slowly been uncovered and renovated to as much historical accuracy as possible. This was incredibly fun to experience, especially after our modern bath house experience the night before.

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The Bath Abbey

Next to The Roman Baths is the Bath Abbey, a massive church with beautiful stained glass windows. We didn’t have too much time to wander through here before our train back to London, but we took a quick walk through before heading to the train station.

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London, England

We returned to London and spent the remainder of the day settling back in to our hotel. We had just one more full day in London before continuing our adventure into Paris.

Back to Tower Bridge

Our final day was spent checking out a few last locations and revisiting a few favorites. Our first stop was a stroll by Tower Bridge. While we had been here briefly a few days before after visiting The Tower of London, we spent more time here this day enjoying the view.

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The Orc’s Nest, Borough Market, Gelato, and a Long Walk

From here, we quickly wandered through a few remaining locations in London. We stopped by a board game shop called The Orcs Nest, ate lunch at Borough Market and picked up gelato for dessert.

It was while eating gelato we started to notice a problem. We had been using the London Underground (their subway system) to get around easily. However, rather than the quick 15-ish minutes from our location via the underground back to our hotel that we were expecting, all of our apps seemed to imply that the trip would take well over an hour. Upon further inspection we realized that there was a mechanical problem at our station we needed to get to, and due to rush hour beginning in London, it was going to be very difficult to take the tube back to our hotel efficiently.

So, rather than fight the crowds on the tube and take a long, roundabout route, we decided to take the tube to the closest station we could get to from our current location and walk the rest of the way. This led to a nearly two mile walk through central London. Normally, this wouldn’t be too bad. However, what we realized later was that London was going through an air quality crisis that afternoon. So, our two mile walk was spent breathing in smoggy air, so by the end of the walk, neither of us were feeling the best. This smoggy air would follow us to Paris, and we ended up fighting air quality issues for the remainder of the trip.

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Paris, France

Off to Paris! We took the Eurostar train from St. Pancras station in London to Gare du Nord station in Paris. This train took us on the famous “Chunnel” that runs beneath the English channel, connecting the island of England to mainland Europe.

Settling In to Paris

Our hotel in Paris was perfectly located in central Paris. We spent the afternoon settling in, getting snacks from the grocery store nearby, and enjoying our first taste of famous Parisian macarons and other sweets.

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The Arc De Triomphe, The Eiffel Tower, & Delicious Desserts

Our first full day in Paris was our touristy day. We visited the Arc Di Triomphe arch and the Eiffel tower. We also visited several great Paris bakeries, and took back a haul of treats to enjoy at our hotel.

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Disneyland Paris

Our second full day in Paris was spent at Disneyland! Our ticket allowed us to access both Disneyland and Walt Disney Studios parks. We spent a full day enjoying both the parks, and appreciating the similarities and differences to the American theme parks. One of my favorite things that is unique to the Paris park was their Alice in Wonderland themed hedge maze, that was incredibly fun to wander through.

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The Palace of Versailles

The next day we took a train out of central Paris to the town of Versailles to visit the famous palace. This place was extravagant and gaudy. We spent several hours wandering through the expensive and intricate rooms and viewed their massive gardens. The gardens were out of season, but still beautiful even when not in bloom. While we enjoyed seeing this in person, it was somewhere neither of us needed to see a second time.

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Not The Trip Ending We Had Planned

This was supposed to be the end of our trip. Our final day was supposed to be spent getting our Covid tests to confirm we could re-enter the United States and wandering through a few additional neighborhoods in Paris. However, this didn’t quite go to plan. Our Covid tests came back positive, to our complete surprise. We spent the morning in minor chaos, rescheduling our flights, and making a plan to figure out how we were going to quarantine for the remaining days.

We were able to get a new hotel, get access to food, and get settled to quarantine. Our new hotel was out near the airport, so rather than watching the city outside our window, we looked out at a parking lot with the planes that were supposed to take us home flying overhead. Just a couple days later, we both tested negative, which was a huge relief. Neither of us never really had symptoms other than being a little bit tired, which we had thought was due to the previous busy two weeks of travel.

We were so thankful to finally get on the plan home to Chicago. On the flight home our flight attendant, I think sensing that we had had a bit of a stressful previous few days, gave us a full bottle of champagne to enjoy between the two of us, which was a fun treat.

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Our first trip to Europe together was both everything we dreamed it would be, and incredibly complicated and stressful in its own way. I’m just so thankful we were finally able to go on this trip and enjoy London together, a place that has become incredibly special to the both of us.