For the first half of my decade living in France, I rented a tiny studio apartment off Nice’s central square, Place Masséna, in the French Riviera. Uber was a pipe dream at the time, but luckily, the seaside town can be easily navigated on foot or by bike—and I once even made the 20-minute ride home from the Nice Côte d’Azur Airport (NCE) on a Vélobleu city bike, my duffel bag delicately balancing on top of the front basket.
When I made the move up to Paris in late 2018, ride-hailing services were already the norm, but in a city where strikes are common (and sometimes unpredictable), I quickly learned that you’ll have better luck below ground than above. Instead, I share the same advice to anyone visiting, even my most stylish friends who are in town for fashion week: skip taxis. Traffic in Paris is notoriously terrible, so the quickest—and easiest—way to get around is by metro (download the Citymapper app) or to simply walk.
Parisians are seen as effortlessly chic, but the reality is that they’re all about practicality—while still remaining fashionable, of course. Sneakers are the most convenient form of footwear for the marathon of stairs descending to Parisian metro stations or jaunting between galleries and museums during events like Art Basel Paris. On the rare occasion I cross to the other side of the river for dinner on the Rive Gauche (Left Bank) or catch a train at Gare Montparnasse (the gateway to Brittany and Bordeaux), it’s a mere 45-minute metro ride from my apartment in Belleville, in the 20th arrondissement, when it could be over an hour by car.
Even before the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, the city was in a constant state of construction, with blocked roads and detours causing traffic jams as early as 7 a.m., which happened one morning as I sat in an Uber en route to Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG). Public transport to the city’s airports has thankfully gotten more streamlined, and it’s now a straight, 25-minute shot to Paris’s Orly Airport (ORY) on Line 14 from the city center.
However, if you do decide you want the comfort of a car, Uber and Bolt (a European ride-hailing service) are your main options. Taxis, on the other hand, will always operate at a fixed rate on rides to and from the airport. And, fortunately, Parisian taxis are required to take credit cards, so if you’ve just landed and don’t have any euros yet, you can still simply hop in a cab and head to your hotel.
