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Having a GPS app would've been useful for my first friday night in Paris

Considering that it was my first Friday night as an international student in Paris, I thought it was appropriate to experience Parisian nightlife. As we were coming out of a wine and cheese tasting that afternoon, we all ordered street food for dinner before heading to a bar.

Here are some things that I started to notice on this adventure.

1. Arranging meeting times is sometimes confusing. This situation is complicated as the wi-fi in our dorm is very slow and restricting. I can't even get on AIM in a reasonable amount of time. Sometimes we have to send two people to knock on people's doors to update meeting and departure times.

2.Most of us have no idea how to converse in French. Only three to four people out of eleven had some command of the language. This language barrier was a little difficult for us when we asked for directions. However, most French people knew some English (especially the twenty-somethings in the area).

3. A GPS program would've been very helpful. I recall so many instances where we happen to lose people from our group, and I would have to call them or text them to locate them. Many times, we would never be able to decipher where these people are as we are very new to the city and there are way too many cafes, street corners, etc. Especially in our small group of 10 people, it would be nice to have a GPS locator on my cell phone to know where my friends are.

4. Along the same lines with the GPS program, we often wandered aimlessly to find a bar or club that is to our taste. There is only so much the internet can tell you on directions and the entertainment venues themselves. (Of course, if one could read through French this becomes much easier on French websites.) Given that Paris is not necessarily like a grid but more of a maze, a GPS program would've been nice just to figure out where we are walking. My travel guide stated that a very lively street for nightlife is Rue de Lappe. Unfortunately, Rue de Lappe is a very small side street behind the Bastille. I was able to find it on Google Maps, but it would be nice to have a program to track our journey and tell us how far it is to the street.

5. The biggest concern was coming home. Metro and trains stop running at 1 am. Some of us were out way past this time. Specifically, two friends and I decided to join another group of students at a Latin dance club. We knew that there were night buses, and I even used the RATP (Paris transportation authority) website to figure out what routes to take. It seemed like it would be easy, but apparently it is very hard to get back to our dorm on the Left Bank from the Right Bank. We ended up walking 20 minutes in the rain to get to a main nighttime bus stop and wait for the only nightline that goes to our dorm. If only we knew about this before, then there would be no problem. We walked around in circles for about two hours until I finally got to my room at 4:30 am. Also, I found out that that the other half of our group had to take cabs back. One cab group got ripped off because they were foreigners. It is most likely that this cab group had a driver who took an extremely long route.

Luckily, my two friends and I had pretty good sense of direction. We were able to get back to our dorm just fine. Next time, I think I will make use of my free 10 minute access to Orange world and figure out where the current nightlife is.

posted by Koh @ 3:04 PM