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Taxis

Taxis in our two great cities work quite differently. In NYC, you raise your hand and a magic yellow chariot stops and you get in. You tell your driver where you want to you and he has to take you there. You pay with either a credit card or cash and the chariot disappears. If you are coming in via bus, train or plane, you wait courteously on a taxi line and get into the next taxi when it is your turn.

In Paris, it is another thing entirely. You can hail one on the street, but the chances are not very good, since taxis are supposed to wait at a taxi stand. This system, while saving gas, does not have the convenience factor built-in to the NYC system. It also is stacked against those who don't know the city very well. At some taxi stands, I have never seen any cars at all.

You probably think that this seems minor but there are some glitches here. Paris is a bit more flexible on process. One time Helmut and I were coming in late via train and we were in the taxi line. After about 5 minutes, people got restless and the entire line dissolved into chaos, with people running down the street reserved for taxis and grabbing the next taxi driving up to the line. We attempted to follow the crowd, but did not have success, so we went back on the line (which was much shorter now). When the next taxi arrived, he asked us where we were going and were told, "non" as he raced ahead to another person running for a taxi. We got the next one, but I felt this was a good lesson on how Paris deals with laws and process.

If you call for a cab, it does arrive, but its meter has been running (supposedly) from the time the driver got the call. So, when you get in, you can already have a tab of 20 euros. For a New Yorker, this is outrageous.

Something has happened in Paris, though, to revolutionize this process: Uber. For those who don't know it, this is a Smartphone app that once you set it up figures out where you are, shows you when the car will arrive (with the driver's name and photo), picks you up, drops you off and you never open your wallet. In fact, you even get your receipt automatically both in the app and your email. No tips, no money, no hassle. People love it here. In fact, it is all over Europe. We went to Amsterdam and sure enough, Uber worked perfectly. It is available in New York as well, but just has not caught on as fast as in Europe.

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