My recent escape from Paris

On my most recent trip to Paris I stayed at the Hôtel du Mont Blanc in the Latin Quarter on rue de la Huchette. My wife found it years ago when we were visiting the city with friends, and I highly recommend it if you're looking for a quaint yet affordable place to stay in Paris. It's in a pedestrian district around the corner from the rue du Chat-qui-Pêche, the smallest street in the city. Notre Dame is within walking distance and the neighborhood is a direct ride on the Métro from Charles de Gaulle airport.

I sprung from the bed that morning at 6:30 sharp thanks to a wake-up call I had asked the front desk clerk to set up for me less than six hours prior, and I quickly gathered my things after having shat, showered and shaved. OK, I hadn't really showered or shaved. Sorry, but no one wants to have to make an extended potty visit during an overseas flight.

Trust me. I've been there. You can't go back to the drink cart which for some reason is always inches away from the bathrooms without everyone staring at you with that look that says You're that guy in 23B who had the audacity to take a crizzap while the rest of us were bumping elbows trying to enjoy our partially hydrogenated Salisbury steak. Take my advice. Go before you fly.

When the hotel clerk wasn't to be found at the front desk I walked downstairs and found him on the lower level in the breakfast room where he was enjoying a baguette and jam with coffee. Upon seeing me he smiled and followed me back up the stairs to the front desk so I could settle my bill.

This was slightly awkward for me because I knew I didn't have enough money to pay for both my room and the phone call I had made the night before to Air France confirming my flight. I barely had enough cash to cover the room. I didn't have any credit cards either. I did have a debit card that was tied to our checking account which had a dollar amount I estimated to be somewhere in the high single digits.

Normally I would feel bad about this but I was still miffed from the night before when I asked the clerk how much a ten-minute phone call would be and he couldn't give me a direct answer. The call ended up being north of 20 euro (that's just over $30 to us impoverished Yanks) so I felt like the hotel was taking me to the cleaners already. Even still, I was clearly going to have to muster up some persuasive French if I wanted to leave the hotel without Inspector Javert as an escort.

The clerk gave me the total and, sure enough, I was short about 18 euro. Now in all honesty I had some cash still in my wallet but I knew I was going to need some airport monies to secure the last-minute travel essentials, namely two bottles of Coca Light and maybe a magazine, so I wasn't going to part with that very readily. Instead I explained to him that I would have to charge the remainder of my balance to the credit card that was used to book my room originally, a credit card that I did not have on my person mind you because I had left it with my wife in the Rome airport.

In the few minutes that followed he and I had an exchange of words that were typical of what two French natives might have shared under similar circumstances. You see, when and American argues with one of his fellow countrymen, he typically thinks himself to be in the right and hopes to convince his opponent of such. On the other hand, when French people argue they typically do so simply for the sake of arguing. They don't go for the win so much as they go for the thrill of debate. I played the game.

His position was that the hotel would spend so much money in fees to my credit card company that it would almost be pointless to charge it on a card. I proposed then that he let me keep my cash and then charge the entire amount to the card, thus minimizing the percentage of fees the hotel would endure. Truth be told, the hotel just didn't like accepting credit cards in the first place and our reservation confirmation even stated that they had a strong preference for cash. I'm not certain of the agreement merchants have with credit card companies but I think that if they require a credit card for booking a room (and this place did) they then obligate themselves to accept a credit card for final payment. I don't know for sure. I'm just guessing.

Anyway, I convinced him that he was holding all the cash I had. He already knew of my penniless plight because I had explained everything to him and asked for his assistance the day before in getting the phone number for Air France, googling information about the airline strike and finding out where in the neighborhood I could take my laptop to freeload someone's wireless connection (in French it's pronounced wee-fee.) This guy was far and away more accommodating than most Parisians would have been in his position, so I really couldn't complain. On the contrary, I appreciated his understanding and his willingness to converse with a non-native in what must have sounded to him like jet-lagged-half-awake-foreigner-at-the-buttcrack-of-dawn broken French. I plead my case, and he relented.

Métro St-Michel was a short walk from the hotel, and I had already purchased the subway ticket I'd need to get back to the airport. The only problem was that for whatever reason my ticket wouldn't clear the turnstile in order to let me in the station. I looked at the markings on it to make sure it hadn't already been used. I tried inserting it several different ways into the machine but every time the turnstile just buzzed and shot the ticket back out at me.

Another early-morning Métro rider saw me fiddling with the ticket and came to my rescue. Giving a quick glance around the station to make sure no one was watching, he then pushed the handicap gate open so I could pass through without validating my ticket. To this day I'm not sure why I couldn't get the ticket to work. I had paid the full amount for a fare from inside the city all the way to the airport and that ticket hadn't been used, but whatever, this guy gave me the courage to do what I wouldn't have had the courage to do otherwise. Hey, I like breaking the rules just as much as the next guy.

For the entire twenty-five-minute subway ride I held on to my unvalidated ticket trying to make it look like I was just another law-abiding passenger when in fact I was a ne'er-do-well law breaker who had already weaseled his way out of a hotel bill like some unscrupulous gypsy. Of the many times I had ridden the Paris Métro, I had never until then gone illegally. As guidebooks would have you believe, when you're caught without a valid ticket, you either pay a hefty fine on the spot or get carried off to jail. I've seen Les Miz enough times to know I'm not cut out for that French chain gang shit.

As my luck would have it I freeloaded successfully all the way to the station at Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Almost.

Just as I was about to enter the airport I looked ahead and noticed people inserting their subway tickets into the turnstiles before leaving the station. I had forgotten that while you need only validate a ticket once when traveling inside the city, if you ride the RER in order to get to farther destinations like the airport or -- God forbid -- Euro Disney you have to validate the ticket upon both entering and leaving the subway to make sure you've paid the full fare for the trip.

Shit.

I knew that as soon as I stuck my bootleg ticket in that machine it was going to announce to everyone around that I was cheating the French out of five euro and because at that point I had spent my last bit of cash in the station on Diet Cokes I really didn't have any money left with which to pay a fine. Keeping calm I quickly tried to pre-plan the French vocabulary I'd need to talk my way out of this one.

I should say at this point that while my French isn't bad, there are certain linguistic feats that require a very high level of language ability on the part of the speaker in order to succeed and lying is one of them. I pictured myself trying to play the dumb American who didn't know any better to the gendarmes and in the meantime missing my flight home. Oddly enough fate threw me another bone and I dove for it.

Of the many turnstiles at Charles de Gaulle Métro station there was one that was in the midst of being serviced by a transit worker. It wasn't out of order. Other people were going through it. It's just that evidently a ticket would occasionally get caught up in the mechanism and be rejected so the worker would have to manually let the passenger through the gate. Seeing this as a potential solution for my dilemma, I walked up, casually inserted my virgin ticket into the machine, and it spat the ticket back out at me with a loud buzz.

I pulled it out of the slot and gave the transit worker a puzzled look. Taking the ticket from my hand and flipping it over, he tried reinserting it back in the turnstile. No surprise. The machine spat it back out and buzzed again.

I thought for certain at this point the guy would have looked at the ticket and noticed that it hadn't been validated at the point of origin but he did not. Instead he just gave that Gallic shrug that Frenchmen do when something doesn't go as planned. Then he simply opened the gate with his key and motioned for me to pass through. I thanked him and headed promptly for the Air France ticketing desk without looking back.

I got the pat down a total of three times before they let me on the plane that day, probably because French Intelligence was on to my game. Suits me just fine. They did finally let me on and I made it back to Atlanta with no further difficulties. It's a good thing too. Otherwise I would have had to resort to being one of those homeless people that lives in the Paris Metro.

If you think airplane bathrooms smell bad, you should get a whiff of the Pigalle station.