We can be happy underground...

Except when that underground is the Paris Metro.

My introduction to this supposedly zonderful city has not been particularly wonderful. For those who have complained about London's underground, it is perfect in comparison to Paris. My luggage isn't the lightest or easiest thing to lug around, so it makes getting around between hostels slightly challenging. Now add the Paris metro into the equation.

For that, add cramped trains, (and this isn't during any sort of busy time period) the pain of which is multiplied by several squealing children that simply would not shut up despite the (rather limited) efforts of the parents to silence them. Obviously they considered it acceptable for the infant to be producing earsplitting shrieks that would likely have contravened any local laws on noise disturbance.

The next irritation is line switches. There's lots of stations in the city, so it's likely that you can get very close to where you want to go, but the convoluted stations means that I'd imagine that in more than a few cases that it would be less time consuming to simply walk there instead. I imagine it might take 5-10 minutes to make some of the line changes because of how far you have to walk in the station. This might be okay... if Paris had discovered escalators and/or elevators. But they haven't. And they've filled their underground stations with stairs. Sometimes there doesn't even seem to be a point, as you'll climb up some stairs, only to just go down another set only a short distance ahead.

Then after dutifully following the signs, I ended up getting to a platform on the correct line, but heading in the wrong direction. Even better, there was no means to get to the other side of the platform without leaving and re-entering the ticketed area. Of course, that required me to haul my luggage halfway across the station. Again. The real kicker was the long circular staircase.

I eventually got to my destination and managed to find the place that I'm staying. It hasn't heard of elevators either. It has, however, just like the station, heard of circular staircases. And I'm four floors up. Lesson for the future - always travel as light as is humanly possible.