Paris Transportation Questions
 

We will arrive at Gare de l'Est, most likely in early afternoon, and are considering taking a bus to our apartment. We also want to add a Carte Orange Mensuel to our Navigo cards for the month that begins the next day, although that can wait until we get to the apartment. Can we buy the one-trip Metro/bus tickets we need for that first bus trip inside la gare or do we need to go down to the Metro station to buy them and then come back up to the bus stop? Can we pay "cash" on the bus (if so, is exact change needed? how much?), or do we need tickets? And, similar to the first question, can we do the Navigo business in a guichet dans la gare or does that also need to be done in the Metro station itself? Alas, as backward US'ers, our cards lack le chip, so we need a person to "fill" the Navigo for us. Many thanks for your help.

When I have luggage, I always take a taxi instead of bus.
We did this in Paris and it worked out perfect.
Once you ditch the luggage, the Metro is the only way to go.

Although we've never paid our fare on a bus, I've seen lots of other people doing this - which delays the bus departure (upsetting many passengers). I'm also pretty sure that the drivers made change.

You can have the metro attendent re-charge your Navigo, or do so using cash at a machine. Your chipless card won't work.

Stu Dudley

YOu can pay cash on the bus, they want you to have exact change. YOu can buy a single ticket on the bus, but you can't buy a ticket that would require correspondance (ie, no transfers).

Yes, you can buy a single ticket from the driver on board a bus. It costs €1.70. I don't remember whether they ask for exact change or not. If not, I am sure the driver would much prefer it.

Anselm

Take a taxi and avoid the hassle of your first day

Thanks for the info and advice. A taxi is an option, but we would not need to transfer using a bus, and we try to be urban adventurers. Although we have used the bus in Paris before (but always with Carte Orange or, more recently, Navigo), our plan this trip is to use the bus more and the Metro less.

If the bus has already has lots of passengers your luggage may not be well received. You can expect to receive lots of snooty looks from the Parisians. You can be an urban adventurer after that, but honestly, especially if you are jetlagged and feeling a bit muddled, you are probably just going to p... people off.

I agree with you that the bus is a great way to travel around Paris - it's lovely to see the city from the bus rather than being stuck underground on the metro. We usually mix it up depending on where we are headed at the time.

I'm guessing that passengers already on the bus normally see lots of people at the Gare de l'Est getting on the bus with luggage. Not 2 pieces per person, but carry-on luggage or a small checked bag.

In the past, people on Fodors have reported an absence of taxis at times. We experienced this once about 10 years ago.

Stu Dudley

Cathies--Thank you for the advice. We will be well-rested, having arrived by train from Strasbourg two weeks after our trans-Atlantic flight. If a taxi is readily available, perhaps we will do that. However, we have learned to respond with a smiling "desolee" or the several times we have received such looks.

d_claude_bear, sounds like you have a great trip planned.

I was on a crowded bus in Paris one time and couldn't get to the machine near the door to swipe my pass. A elderly French lady nearly had an apoplexy explaining in very rapid grumpy French to me what I had to do. I'm sure she was just making sure I didn't get into trouble. I only have schoolgirl French but I certainly got the message! Finally I managed to reach past someone and swipe the card and she gave me a big smile and relaxed. I wish I had thought of the 'desolee' response, at the time I couldn't think of anything to say.

At the risk of resurrecting a fairly old thread, I thought I would post a follow-up to my question.

Upon arrival from Strasbourg at Gare de l'Est, we boarded a nearly-empty #30 bus (it originates at that stop), paid our €3,40 fare for the two of us, and settled back for an uneventful ride to the Batignolles-Rome stop, three blocks from our rental apartment.

(BTW, that is not the apartment we had arranged to rent almost a year earlier. While in Venice, about 8 days before we were due in Paris, we finally gave in and checked our e-mail to discover that the apartment we had rented had been virtually destroyed by explosion and fire a week earlier--so we scrambled to find another apartment in the same neighborhood.)

Four weeks later, we retraced our steps (more-or-less), taking the first #30 bus of the day shortly after 7:00 a.m. to Gare du Nord, then the RER to CDG.

With well-over 125 Metro and bus connections during those four weeks, we found public transportation in Paris to be efficient, convenient, safe, practical, and . . . what else can I say? We never even considered a taxi at any point.