Tales from the road: Paris airports and scooter cabs

You arrive a Paris CDG. Its early am there, your body is telling you its much earlier. You are tired. You have a meeting in about 2 hours. Its in La Défense, ~30-40km away.  Normally this is not a big deal, you get on the RER and head there. But today (like actually quite a lot of the days) the RER is on strike, and so are the busses. The taxi rank has a 2 hour line (and even so, you are informed, that is now a 3 hour ride. Queue Gallic shrug). Your red-eye experience is no worry for them.

Have no fear (of being late that is), you can take a scooter cab. What’s this? Well, its a set of lightly regulated dudes with motorcycles. Your bag is bolted to the back, you are slung over it. A sort of sack is put across your legs (for the rain/cold/whatever). You grab your gallant frenchman by the waist (gingerly) and off you go.

You weave in and out of traffic. You try not to smell (well, anything. the inside of this helmet? the paris street? your driver? None are overly appealing). After ~1:50 you arrive in La Défense. Its like blade runner the buildings!. You thank your aspiring mario andretti of a driver, and sort of clamber/fall off the scooter, kicking the sack away as you go. ~150€ changes hands. Perhaps money well spent if this were an amusement park, but as someone who just wants to get to a customer meeting and was hoping to have a couple of minutes to wash his face in some cafe, well, not so much.


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2 Responses to “Tales from the road: Paris airports and scooter cabs”

  1. John Glass

    If only you had an electric bicycle….. (that was portable)

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