nous avons seulement commencé…
Five days in Paris (already?) and I’ve fallen in love. Sure, I’m a skinny American kid, and she’s a series of underground trains, but we were made for each other.
And they said it would never work.
The Metro is a truly beautiful thing. A competent traveler can reach any point in the city proper within half an hour. Even I can achieve such a feat given 45 minutes. And, I’m quickly discovering, the Metro is more than mere mass transit. It’s a concert hall, housing everything from potbellied, elderly men singing karaoke to eight piece pirate bands. It shuttles tourists and businessmen, and delivers drunks safely to their apartments. In it, pamphlets are distributed, newspapers sold, merchandise haggled over. Yesterday, I saw three Parisians use it to move their furniture.
Compared to the vehicular no-man’s-land in the streets above, the Metro is clockwork, pure perfection. Parisians grumble and curse when the Metro is delayed two or three minutes. But driving a car in Paris is to take one’s life in one’s hands – frantically dodging pedestrians, bicycles, Vespas, construction workers, the occasional stray animal and, of course, other drivers – who favor the following stance: one hand employed in sucking down several cigarettes per block, the other honking incessantly and gesturing rapid-fire profanities to anyone in visual range, with, time permitting, some occasional interaction with the wheel.
For a reasonable 55€, I secured myself a Passe Navigo – unlimited Metro usage for a month. I hope she considered that a proposal.
