On 16 May 2006 10:50:39 -0700, "
wrote:

Thanks for that. I had a similar experience using the Paris metro a
couple of years ago. The queue for tickets at Gard Nord was slow
moving, the single down escalator was out of order and the signs
confusing.

IMHO Paris Nord needs some sort of really, really, obvious ticket
machines with huge signs in a range of languages which people can't
miss as they get off arriving trains. These would take coins, notes
and non-French credit cards, and issue "travelcards", and it should be
really simple to work out at a glance which machines sell main line,
which suburban and which metro tickets.

I keep a stock of single Metro tickets at home now, so I can avoid the
hell of trying to buy a ticket there, though I'm told there is a
newsagent "downstairs" which sells tickets, and can be used to avoid
the queues.

Having got a ticket, I then get stuck in the atrium by the suburban
platforms which seems to have been designed by Escher.

I've not been to Rome, but everyone I know who has says the metro is
anb example of how not to run a metro. Milan was a bit chaotic when I
went there, with all the metro ticket machines at the (misleadingly
named) Central station dead.

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK