Read this before taking the metro in Paris

I’m sure everyone has heard about the infamous Paris metro with pickpockets etc, I’ve always generally been more alert when taking the metro because I did witness pickpockets on the move and had friends experience things getting stolen from them.

General tips:

- Keep your personal belonging close to you, best if they are in front of you so you can see clearly

- Avoid sitting near the doors of the metro while using your phone as they can take and run out of the metro

- I try to avoid using AirPods in metros as well so that I am more aware of the surroundings

In general, just keep a look out and stay alert and everything should be fine.

Okay.. but this was not what happened to us. One of my friend actually got fined by station agents though we all bought our tickets, went through the gantry and held on to our tickets the entire time?! 😡 It was honestly a really frustrating experience because it does not make sense to be wronged and on top of it pay a fine of 35€ when you clearly did not do anything wrong. They mentioned that my friend ticket was not validated (implying that she did not put her ticket through the gantry or that that station has no gantry). This was honestly so confusing to us because there was a gantry at that station and she could not have went through it without scanning her tickets. Long story short, we made them call the station to double check if there was a gantry but did not work, they simply insisted for her to pay 35€ and was not going to budge. The fine is usually 80€, but he was asking for 35€ (which feels so much like a scam?) because I guess he trusted that we did pay and validated our tickets but there was just a system error. She ended up just paying for it because we did not want to further waste anymore time on this, we could have the police over but would take such a long time for the issue to be resolve and felt like it was not worth it.

The station we were at was Chaussee d’Antin La Fayette, and they have station agents there very regularly. Just take note if you’re travelling to always have your tickets on you. And to be honest, I do not of a solution for this but my other friend who lives in Paris told us that she faced this incident before when she just moved and was so terrified that she took videos every time she entered the metro 💀

Lo and behold, the cherry on top of our night, we missed the Eiffel lights by 1 min because we were stuck there for a good 30 minutes 🍒👍🏼

#traveltips #lemon8travel #europe #travelwithme