Today’s topic is the most expensive metro tickets ever and how not to shoot yourself with an arrow twice. (You have to listen to the podcast episode to hear that part!)
That maybe doesn’t make sense, but it will.
I put Carson in charge of the Paris portion of our trip and he decided to get us Navigo Metro tickets.
Navigo Tickets NOT the best choice!
It maybe wasn’t the best choice for us for two reasons.
The NaviGo tickets run like Monday through Sunday. So when he bought the tickets, they actually didn’t work because we had bought them on a Friday, so they wouldn’t start working till Monday. We had to go back and pay for a Friday and then weekends.
You actually DO need a Picture – or BIG fines!
The lady who sold us the tickets also explained we needed to have a picture on our NaviGo. There were photo booths in the metro, and we made it work for Bryson. It was 8 euros to get pictures of Bryson, and then we tried to get pictures of Devon, and it wasn’t working.
Carson said he had never had his NaviGo checked when he was in Paris, so it probably wasn’t a big deal!
Warning – this was a BAD DECISION!!
I was like, okay, Carson’s in charge of this.
Well, day two of our Navigo, we went to the Louvre. And as we were leaving the Louvre, we go into the metro, and there were metro guards there that were checking people’s cards. We showed them our cards and we didn’t have pictures on them. And they’re like, you have to pay a fine because you don’t have pictures on your Navigo cards.
And I was thinking, we tried to get pictures and the machine wasn’t working. And some of the other people were playing dumb, saying, “we didn’t know we needed to have pictures”
Bryson had a picture on his card, so it was evident we did know we had to have pictures. Anyway, my husband, who is normally pretty calm, got very irate and was yelling at the metro people.
He was very, very angry. Part of the reason, I guess, he was so angry is because it was a 35 euro charge, fine, for each person, and there was six of us that had to pay the fine. So that’s like over 180 euros, and it was close to $200.
And I’m just like, we just have to pay fine.
We should have gotten pictures!
Make copies of your driver’s license for pictures!
Anyway, just research the Metro before you go and really understand if you want to get Navigo tickets. If you do make a copy of your driver’s licenses before you go and cut out your little pictures. It’s the perfect size to fit on the Navigo Pass. That’s my hint. If I had done that, we could have saved $200.