“The airport bus which will leave you closest to the hotel goes to Montparnasse,” my Paris contact assures me in an email as I fine-tune our arrival from Australia. “However, once you are there and you’ve secured a taxi, you must put all your belongings in the boot and seat yourself in the cab before telling him where you’re going. Once you tell him, the taxi driver will wave his arms wildly, speak loudly or scream at you in French and make it abundantly clear that it is not worth his time to take you to a destination so near…. The minimum taxi fare, by law, is five euros. So even if the meter does not show this amount, that is what he will charge.”

“Should we walk?” I email back, never one for irate confrontation as an additive to jetlag. “Don’t you think that may be better if the hotel is so close?”

“No, you should take the bus and brave the taxi,” comes an immediate reply. “They scream, they make noise, but they do not bite.”

Well, that makes a welcoming thought! 

Two weeks later, Gordon, my husband and long-suffering travel companion, and I are kept in further suspense about our reception as we wait a good 15 minutes at the taxi rank opposite the place where we have been set down by the bus. With increasing annoyance we wonder why three taxis parked fifty metres away make no move to roll on down to us, even though their drivers can plainly see us. After my friend’s dire warnings I don’t dare to go and ask. 

“They always do that,” says a woman tensely. She is ahead of us in the lengthening queue, wild-eyed and obviously jittery. Late for a meeting because she has overslept, she reveals, yet I notice she also prefers to wait her turn rather than risk a screaming match.

At last it’s our turn in the line and we flag a passing taxi whose driver U-turns with admirable disregard for his tyres or the oncoming traffic. We follow our instructions to the letter, but even when seated, our nerve-endings primed for a torrent of abuse, there is none. 

He even manages a smile – a smile! – when we state the destination from our secure position, firmly buckled-in the back seat. And although I suspect he might take us around the long way to justify our measly journey, instead he uses a dashboard-mounted GPS, painstakingly tapping in our destination, the Hotel Victoria Palace, before he even lets off the hand brake. 

It is with a sense of anticlimax that we realize our cab driver is a mild and gentle man. A mere pussy-chat. 

As it happens, due to the complicated one-ways en route to the hotel, the distance is much longer and the fare decidedly more than the minimum five euros, however I tip him generously anyway when we arrive, mainly in gratitude for not yelling at us. 

Maybe Paris is glad to see us again, after all.