metro
Riding the Metro in France and England (with stroller)
I just love riding the metro in Paris. There's something about it that I find quite pleasing. (London or Manhattan, fun but not as much). The Paris metro is very intuitive, artsy, exciting, fun, and a bit grungy. Sometimes I think, if I lived here, I might just ride the metro around for the fun of it. They've also got a very well done plan interactif (interactive map) online.
We had a fun time with the baby stroller in the Paris metro - lots of stairs (and pretty hot in the tunnels). Stroller doesn't fit through the regular ticket gates so you have to get the attention of the lone employee sitting in a booth 15 yards away. When she sees you need to get through she pushes the buzzer on the "luggage/buggy" gate with barely a nod. Only a couple of times did they ask us to validate our tickets through the machine, so our 10-pack lasted longer than expected.
In London the employees at the subways (most everywhere for that matter) were oddly helpful and nice (relative to what I'm used to in the USA). There was always someone standing by the "luggage/buggy" gate to let you through and check your ticket. Generally with a smile and helpful/open demeanor. There also seemed to be a lot of attendants at the big stations, and a few at the smaller.
In Paris I rarely saw more than a few attendants at the big stations. At a very large and busy station we saw a soccer-team sized group of teenage boys strut through and hop the gates. The lone attendant, behind the glass, was too busy selling tickets to notice. Both places had machines you could buy your tickets from, but neither worked with our credit card, since it doesn't have the fancy European microchip.
Another station in Paris had no attendant in the booth. The text and icon on the gate said "push the call button". I looked around for a button. I found one on the wall that had the same icon (profile of a head with radar waves coming out the open mouth). I pushed. Alarm sounds. Reverberating through the mostly ceramic and concrete room. We wait a bit, cringing. No one comes. Laura goes through the regular gate with a ticket, opens the exit and lets the stroller and myself in. We proceed through the tunnel, down the stairs, follow the signs, find the correct platform. Alarm still sounding throughout entire station and down to the platform. People aren't really noticing. We pass under the CCTV monitors (I wave at myself) and stand there for five minutes until the train comes. We get on the train and breath a visible sigh of relief at getting away from the repetetive, loud, buzzing. Again, no one else seemed to notice.
In general I would say the staff anywhere were more friendly in London than Paris. It's not that I found the French grumpy, per se, they were just busy thinking about more important things. Once I learned to step right up, be decisive, and ask for what I want (making sure to say "bonjour/suis", "si vous plait", "merci beaucoup", and if necessary "désolé") things started to become much easier.
Today was Easter Sunday and we took the metro to Bois de Vincennes. While waiting for our train Meadow discussed the joys of hearing her voice reverberate in the tunnel:
