Finally!
We’ve just landed at Charles de Gaulle airport, and we’re more than ready to get off the plane and move around. Our next steps after collecting our bags are to get from here to central Paris, find our accommodations, then get settled in. We’ve read about Air France’s Les Cars bus service from CDG to the city, and we’re about to give it a try.
Charles de Gaulle airport is about 18 miles outside of Paris. The easiest way to get to central Paris from here is to take a taxi, but it’s expensive, especially if traffic is heavy. There are other, cheaper means of transportation, but dealing with the intricacies of public transportation in a foreign country can be daunting. Especially when you’ve got luggage to drag around and you’ve just spent the last 12 hours on an airplane.
The public transportation option is especially risky for me, because we had a bad experience in a similar situation when I tried to save a few bucks in Venice. But let’s leave that alone for the time being. However, Air France operates a bus system called “Les Cars”, that seems like it might be pretty good. Their busses only go back and forth between several key destinations, so the chances of getting on the right bus are pretty good. We decided to at least go and check it out.
We collected our bags and made our way to the place where “Les Cars” busses come and go. That was something of an accomplishment in itself, because this airport is huge. In fact, we had to take a bus just to get to where we needed to be to take a bus. Now to see about getting bus tickets… There was a ticket vending machine where a short line of people had queued up. We got in line. The line was short, but it moved slowly. Apparently we weren’t the only ones here who hadn’t done this before.
Now to Buy Tickets
Finally, we were next to go. We were next to go, alright, but the guy in front of us was taking forever. He was an older Asian gentleman. He turned around and “asked” if I could help him. I say “asked”, but it wasn’t like he said, “Hey buddy, can you help me out here?” He probably didn’t speak french or english, and he probably guessed that my chinese (or whatever) wasn’t the greatest, either. He just gave me a look, waved his hands around, and clearly conveyed the message: “If you ever want to get your turn to get a bus ticket, you might want to come here and give me a hand, because I don’t have a clue about this thing.”
My first thought was to say, “Sorry pal, but I’m not from around here, and I don’t know how to work it, either.” But then I thought to myself, “Hey… I need to figure out how to work this thing anyway.”
So I said to him, “Why certainly. I would be delighted to help a fellow traveler who is in need!”
We messed around for awhile and pretty soon we got him what I think was a ticket to where he wanted to go. We got him a ticket to somewhere, at least. I know because I’m pretty sure that was the little thing that popped out of a slot all of a sudden, surprising us both. Now, finally, we got our turn at the ticket machine.
By this time I was practically an expert. I selected the bus that goes from our location to the Arc de Triomphe. From there it would be a short taxi ride to our apartment. That’s right – our apartment. We’re going to stay in an apartment this time instead of a hotel. Should be interesting, eh? More on that later.
We got our tickets, which cost 17 euros each. A taxi ride would have cost at least 60 euros and possibly substantially more, so this was quite a savings. Of course, we hadn’t actually gotten there yet, but it was looking fairly promising at this point. We waited a little while and before too long our bus showed up. We hopped in and we were off. If we had really gotten on the right bus, we should be at the Arc de Triomphe in about 45 minutes.
To be continued…
For more detailed information, see the Travel Notes, Paris page.
Photo Credit for the Les Cars bus photo: Anosh Tamboowala, http://s44.photobucket.com/user/SR747300M/profile/
