A bit off topic but IMHO your first thought should instead be: "hey, this is Europe, why not try the train?"
In Lyon, the train from the airport to the city takes half an hour, same as a car. My guess is that you'll have a vastly better experience than taking the train in North America, and also a better experience than at least the OP had when taking a Bolt.
https://france3-regions.franceinfo.fr/auvergne-rhone-alpes/r...
https://www.ledauphine.com/faits-divers-justice/2025/01/24/t...
https://actu.fr/auvergne-rhone-alpes/lyon_69123/voitures-bru...
There is typically no integration of the airport baggage handling with the train baggage handling. So you need to move everything with carts that you can't take on the train.
An international trip to Europe for a longer duration is also a significant trip and not something you want to "one bag". Add in jet lag, multiple young kids, car seats, stroller etc. and it quickly becomes easy to see why the train is cumbersome for the initial airport to lodging connection.
I love taking public transit, but also, after a really long flight I can understand not wanting to think really hard about getting to the hotel.
Yes, traveling is a skill. It gets easier (and more comfortable) the more you practice it.
I have two people and four items of luggage plus a personal bag each. City trains are poor for this and subways are worse, but I am here for two weeks - I do need clean clothes.
Well, there's you problem. I have traveled the world, including many trips of 6 weeks or more, with only a single. carry-on. Laundromats exist everywhere.
Snark aside, a bit of planning and organization w.r.t. packing pays off handsomely in terms of flexibility when traveling.
Spontaneous weekend trip to a remote island when carrying only a backpack - sure. Add two heavy suitcases, and it becomes an impossibility.
Most often they seem to ape most of major US tech platforms functionality but critically somehow miss the "make something people want" and instead make something that:
- Sort of works? Has all the major screens but the whole experience just feels off and not well thought out.
- Is basically a way for locals to prey on tourists. Or is easily abused to scam etc.
Bluntly that is not a viable business model. Additionally tourism as a whole will not build a durable and innovative economy.
There is this distinct disinterest in serving the customer. Making the experience delightful, frictionless, feeling good is oddly foreign. I basically gave up trying to use local things unless I have to because when things go poorly customer support is basically non-existent.
I know Uber, AirBnb etc for better or worse. I don't want to deal with whatever surprising edge case or unexpectedly subpar experience is normed on the local platforms.
Anyway, Booking.com is a European company and has many more customers than AirBnB.
Sorry to shatter your illusions, but for April 2025 (most recent month with final data) <https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2...>, Canadian visits are down 20% yoy but overall worldwide visits to US are up 1.3% yoy, including 17% yoy rise in Mexican visitors.
Full data <https://www.trade.gov/i-94-arrivals-program>
I am saying tourism is not something governments should want to heavily optimize an economy for. No amount of taking money from people on vacation will translate into building a more competitive or innovative economy.
Also, Booking.com is unbelievably exploitative and rife with dark patterns.
I was booked to catch a DBS train from Brussels to Berlin at 9:45 am. I get to the station at 9:25 looking for the train, can't find it. I go to the counter and get told the train came early at 9:15 then "Not my fault" (the first words out of the DBS attendant's mouth").
I got this same thing from a Swiss Air attendant when something happened. Nearly the first words were "Not My Fault"
I'm not sure I've ever heard that from a customer service rep in the USA and it was shocking to hear those words as the first like conditioned/scripted words from these reps.
I only brought it up because of it seemed to fit the previous comment of poor customer service.
It may sometimes be useful to verbalize this explicitly by saying "I know you're not responsible for this, but can you please do XYZ to solve the issue", and if it's a reasonable request I assume they'd be happy to comply. Depending on the country and culture, you may also need to be slightly more direct in asking (nicely!) for what you want, rather than hoping that the customer service rep will "make it right" by guessing what you want. You may perceive that as bad service but I think it's mainly about differing communication styles.
- Someone else says it's good in Portugal https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44640459
- Someone says Malta is good, France is bad: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44640424
- Someone says Northern Europe is fine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44640369
- Another saying Denmark is fine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44640111
Certain cultures have apparently have different attitudes on customer service and taking advantage of people. In Japan, many times, cab drivers have shut off the meter early because they made a mistake in their navigation and felt guilty for both the time lost and the extra cost if they'd left the meter on.
Conversely, cab drivers in Rome, Turkey, Thailand have a much worse reputation,
Europe is a collection of countries, not a federation of states (yet).
I’ve never had troubles using Bolt. But I had similar to TS’ issues with other services, including Uber.
Business doesn’t care neither about drivers nor about riders. Everyone tries their best to survive. And most people just wouldn’t care to struggle through support bots. Proper support service is a unicorn nowadays.
Preach! Was impressed when I called Chewy (USA Amazon for pet stuff) and someone picked up right away and was super knowledgeable and friendly.
Here's the bus that goes from the airport into the center of the city: https://saraksti.rigassatiksme.lv/index.html#bus/22/a-b/1541...
Pretty much all public transport here is also covered by Google Maps, both the buses, trams and others (although I think the micro-buses might have a different ticket thing going on, I don't really ride those).
You can pay for the ticket with an app, by scanning a QR code on the inside of the vehicle (or inputting a code), allows paying with Apple Pay and other similar methods for buying tickets. A single ticket costs 1.50 EUR.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flutter.rs...
https://apps.apple.com/lt/app/r%C4%ABgas-satiksmes-koda-bi%C...
Or just buy an e-talons card for any number of rides you need: https://www.rigassatiksme.lv/en/tickets-and-e-ticket/types-o...
On that particular route you have to press the button for them to stop at any given stop, but otherwise it's no different than any other public transport route.
Source: I live here and took that route in the last month.
As for Bolt and Bolt Food, my experiences with both have been fine. Though tbh both the rides and also food deliveries end up being way more expensive than the public transport (around 5-10x, depending on the route and time), as well as either getting meals from the local stores or just cooking yourself.
I'm happy they exist though, can't really speak for what they're like in other EU countries though, sounds like the experience really sucked.
However, tons of issues with using their scooters.
After lazily splurging on bolt for a few years after they offered service in this central European city, the only problems as a user that I've noticed were price increases over time on fares in general, and peak hours pricing that increased pricing 3-7x. Uber was and has been always more expensive and rarely used for that matter.
While these seem to be standard issues in the tech world, this is nothing compared to the horror stories one can find on /r/doordash.
When your N crosses gets above N per day, even the 0.1% edge cases happen several days times a day. When this has real world implications, even a single instance can matter a lot.
It doesn't make sense to me so it feels like there's relevant information is missing. From a quick search, it has a 4.8 on the Apple and Google store. So I'm leaning towards this being an isolated experience.
I've used Uber 100s of time. One time I had 2 drivers cancel on me back-to-back during a surge in the rain and one of them drive off forcing me to cancel and it was a very bad experience. But it's not a representative experience of my other rides.
I think with the Jubilee many drivers just switched to Uber.
I also took rides in official taxis. They all wanted to negotiate the fare, refused to run the meter, and absolutely refused to take credit cards.
I encounter this here in my city (in Czechia) too - especially at night, drivers will cancel on you whenever, or you simply wait and watch in the app (be it Uber or Bolt) how driver after driver simply ejects your request.
Trust me, it's not incompetence, the drivers absolutely know what they are doing.
It seems so fake to me and so far from the experience I have here in France.
I’ve encountered similar issues before and ended up switching to Uber permanently. Luckily, Uber is available where I live. The same goes for banking apps and brokers here. Half of them have a weird mix of German and English when you try to change the language, and most of the time they just don’t work at all. I guess the cliché that tech has never been Europe’s strong suit has some truth to it.
Switzerland and Sweden for example.
