Traveling Know How

Traveling to a destination that you have never been to can be quite daunting at times. Will you get lost? Will you be able to communicate? What's the cheapest option for getting around?

Our guests often ask us about the best way to get to the apartments from the airport or train station and most of the time, my response is to take a taxi or use a car service. Yes, the taxi or the car service is more expensive than using the metro or RER but personally when I am arriving in a city after a long day's travel (or overnight), the last thing I want to do is to contend with crowded metros and heaving my bag up and down stairs and believe me in some of the Paris metro stations there are quite a bit of stairs.

My advise is that if you have luggage that is cumbersome or too heavy to carry comfortably, get into a cab. You will arrive fresher and in good time and may even avoid some of those very unpleasant experiences that tourists around the world have to be concerned about - pickpockets. Nothing says tourist more than piles of luggage and the confused look on ones face when you are unsure of where you are going.

Once you have a feel for the layout of the city, then by all means take public transportation for your return back to the airport or train station.

But then the question comes up of how much is a taxi ride going to cost? Well a metered taxi starts off with a fixed rate and increases over time as we all know, so depending on how long the ride is, what time of day it is and how many people you have in the taxi and how many pieces of luggage beyond one, you have, the price varies.

But do not worry if this answer seems somewhat vague, I have a solution that is sure to please. The internet has a plethora of information for travelers and the other day I came across a site that is really interesting. World Taxi Meter. The link takes you the page for Paris but they also provide this service for a few other major world cities. I don't know who came up with this but it is ingenious. The site gives you a rough estimate on the minimum cost of the taxi ride from any one destination to another. I say a rough estimate, as I thought some of the rates seemed a bit low. I would say that you need to allow for a margin of error of about 5-10 euros depending on the above mentioned factors.

You provide the time of day, the departure and destination and presto, you have a semi-accurate price for your cab fare. So you can now check whether it is worth your while to take the taxi or still muscle your way through the metro system.

Happy travels!