In Paris, people use the metro, walk and ride bikes to get almost everywhere. The city is small but very busy, which makes it easy to travel, but sometimes a little challenging too. My experience getting around Paris showed me not only how people move through the city, but also what the culture is like.
In Paris, using the metro, biking and walking are the main modes of transportation. Besides the main roads, there is barely ever any traffic in Paris, and most streets are completely empty of cars. Paris is a super small (but dense) city, and is about 7x smaller than New York City. This makes it easy to walk or bike anywhere in the city in just around 30 minutes. Now that it’s spring, I love walking and exploring new neighborhoods (arrondissements in French) and then being able to walk directly to class!
Because of how small Paris is, the metro system here is amazing and can take you anywhere. I use it every day, multiple times a day, as it is just so easy. Public transportation here includes the metro, the RER (trains), buses and tramways. However, it still has a lot of problems. A single one-way ticket is about $2.60, which is very expensive, and you have to buy a separate ticket for each mode of transportation. As a student, I have a student card called the Pass Navigo, which costs about $400 for the entire year.
