[May 2026] Almost every trip to Paris, France, presents some kind of problem.
Trains are convenient for travelling from Milan to Paris.
However, in early May, the Gare de Lyon, the Paris train station, was under construction, and trains weren’t running.
So, we had no choice but to fly round trip with the budget airline, easyJet.
With budget airlines, if two people are travelling together but only want one checked bag, each person needs to book separately, which is inconvenient.
This was the first stumbling block, and this trip was plagued by transportation problems.
We’ve become quite accustomed to budget airline flights from Malpensa Airport Terminal 2, and the flight to Orly Airport went smoothly.
While wandering around looking for Metro Line 14 to get to the city centre, we came across a travel centre advertising “tickets without queuing.”
We were supposed to pay €14 x 2 for the round-trip fare to the city centre and €2 for the Navigo card.
It should have been €60 for two people, but we were charged €66.40.
It seems the travel centre’s commission was added on.
It was too much trouble to deal with, so we just left it.
On a different note, this Navigo card is tricky.
Train fares in Paris and surrounding area are a flat €2.55, which is a welcome reduction in these tough economic times, but if you don’t understand it well, you’ll end up charging unnecessary amounts.
Trains are €2.55 per ride, but buses are €2.05.
Because the numbers are somewhat similar, we mistakenly charged the bus fare, a big mistake.
We thought we had charged our card for train travel, and we took a suburban train.
We arrived safely and was able to exit the ticket gate without any problems, so I didn’t think anything of it.
However, on the return trip, we couldn’t get through the gate.
So we had to recharge our card.
The reason why we were not stopped at the gate on the way there was because, surprisingly, the €14 for the airport (return trip) had been used for the €2.55 suburban train fare.
Therefore, we ultimately had to charge another €14 for the airport.
This is a learning experience.
Fortunately, we also had the opportunity to take a bus, and we were able to recoup that amount.
Oh, and we had a lot of small paper metro tickets left over from our previous trip to Paris, but these were only valid until June and would become unusable after that.
In this regard, we were lucky enough to use them all up in time.
