THE PARIS METRO

The Metro…

Well, almost every time we went into the Paris Metro we saw someone jump the barriers. Every station had an info/ticket-buying place at one of the entrances with a staff who, though it wasn’t his/her main job, looked over the gates when not busy to ensure people didn’t jump the barriers.  But most Metro stations had two or more entrances so people that jumped the gates didn’t have to be that determined. This was very different from London Tube stations which had one entrance to each station and not only an info/ticket-buying staff but another staff standing right beside the barriers whose job was to watch the gates and to help people like me whose ticket got soaked and ripped in half.

One Metro ride was very very crowded…

When we got to a station where most of the people got off we listened/ watched an older woman yell at a young guy for trying to snatch her purse. Later, on the same metro ride, we might have transferred a guy with a dog got on the bus and said

“I’m not going to give you a normal speech because if I did that I would only get enough money to feed me and my dog, but I also want money for alcohol and drugs to not only feed our bodies but our spirits too.”

Or something like that, that is what I understood.  Then he walked down the car and someone gave him a cigarette and he got off.

One evening, we split up.  Mom and I went back to the hostel, while Sam and dad stayed out.  On the way back, we had the choice of taking line 6 or line 4.  The 6 was a shorter distance to line 13 (our way home) but both the lines would have got us there.  After about two stations on the line 6 train, we were stopped at another station where both lines 4 and 6 stopped.  We were told that there was smoke seen at Montparnasse-Bienvenue station where we were going to make our transfer.  There was to be a delay on line 6 while they checked it out.

2 minutes later, they told us that line 6 would be temporarily closed and that we all had to get off the train! THANKFULLY the line 4 stopped at that same station so we walked to the line 4, got on and rode the train to Montparnasse-Bienvenue and walked the longer distance across the whole M-B station to line 13.  We had a few other options planned out in case we stopped again.  I was disappointed it was so easy.

We had lots of other fun times on the Metro and Sam and dad had a –not so fun- time as Sam explains it.

Paris was really fun but there is too much to write about so I will leave that up to Sam and my parents – they are a little more determined then me with this blogging thing.