Getting to Versailles the other day required taking the RER C - which I usually tend to avoid because it's sort of complicated and very easy to end up elsewhere than your desired destination. I especially don't like it during August because that's when they tend to close down bits of it for construction, replacing those stops with a shuttle bus. Which was the case that particular day.

For those of you not familiar with the Parisian metro system, Versailles is in zone 4, and my pass is only for zones 1-2 so I had to buy a special ticket to get out there. And once you exit the metro system, your ticket is no longer valid. Well, that's not entirely true, they're valid for buses - but you can't use the same ticket to get back into the metro once you've exited.

The problem here being that I had to exit the metro system in order to catch the shuttle bus. And I would have to reenter it at Invalides, using my already-stamped ticket, so I wanted to make sure I would be able to do so. There were so-called Info people walking around all over because of the travaux, so I stopped to ask Girl #1, who barely looked up from her mp3 player as she said "Beats me". On to Girl #2, who said "No, it's not valid, you should take the 10 over to Javel and get on the RER C there".

Now, we were already running behind because of all of this, so the whole "take the line 10" was a less-than-ideal option, so I decided to ask one of the boys, who said "Yes, it's valid". And voilà, we've got the French trifecta right there - you ask three different people the exact same question and you'll get three completely different answers.

I decided to head upstairs to see if I could find a possibly better-informed employee at the ticket office. There was actually someone there for once, so I explained the whole situation and the woman said "Yes, of course it will work, don't you think we'd set it up that way?". I thought to myself "Well, we are in France....." but instead I just said "So you're 100% sure I'm not going to get over there and then have to buy another 3€ ticket?" Which seemed to ruffle her feathers a bit, because she slowly looked me up and down and then said "Écoutez, j'ai 25 ans de metier. Et je suis pas blonde comme vous." (Listen, I've worked here for 25 years. And I'm not blond like you).

Oh-là! Cassé-d by the RATP lady!!

But she was right, my ticket did let me back into the Invalides metro, and we did eventually make it out there, only 30 minutes later than planned.