Paris Subway

It's been a few years since I took a ride on the ol' Metro, but even for a mostly-non-French speaker like myself, it is sublimely easy to get around. Unlike the New York subway, on which each line is named a letter or a number that appears to be completely arbitrary, the Parisian Metro names each line with the origination and destination thereof. Superb! Even better, all of Paris is equally covered by the Metro (at least, all of Paris that is interesting and not "le suburbia").

About 10 years ago, my mother managed to figure it out with two whiny teenagers in tow, and more recently, two of my friends and I used it with great success to see everything worth seeing in Paris and then some. In fact, after a day or so, we became just as familiar with it as your average native Parisian. Example: a friend of mine from the States had a Parisian friend, whose number she gave me. I and my two globe-trotting friends gave him a call and he invited us to come hang out. We showed up and all of us got onto the subway, where a good-natured fight broke out between us as to which would be the most expeditious route to our destination. Needless to say, we (filles américaines, mind you) were correct, and in following our new native guides we traveled about 15 minutes out of the way. Not a big deal, except that we were on a tight schedule and one of my travel-mates almost ended up missing her train to Italy because of it.

If everything still operates the same way that it did when I was last there, you have to buy a bunch of inconveniently sized small pink slips, which you feed into a stamp machine for each subway trip and retain throughout the trip, in the fear that a Parisian cop will stop and demand it of you. If you don't have it, I'm not sure what you can do. Plead ignorance, I suppose, though I'm not sure what kind of cop would believe that you thought that the turnstiles were just put there for your gymnastic amusement and not as a barrier for those who haven't paid. Good luck with that.

Also, to save on electricity maybe, the Parisians have neglected to aircondition their subway system. I'm all for saving energy, but rubbing up against dozens of sweaty hairy french people in a crowded train underground is not my idea of a good time.

PS - watch out for buskers. They will follow you around and hit on you, and eventually give you their email address and you may or may not end up corresponding with them for a few years and become their friend and end up hanging out with them every time they come to visit your area of the world, using money that you have no idea where they earned it, obviously not from playing the flute in a subway. It's a mystery.

Rating: 10 out of 12. clean, well planned out, but the ticket system sucks and the summertime heat is unbearable.