Getting There--Finally!!!

I don't know why it is and I'm willing to concede that maybe it's me, but getting out of Charles de Gaulle takes as long as flying in from Amsterdam. I get into the terminal, tired and hungry, looking for signs for the Roissy bus into Paris and all I see are signs for the Charles de Gaulle shuttle. I follow the signs through the terminal, I follow them and follow them until I'm in another terminal. I follow them and follow them until the signs suddenly disappear. I backtrack until they reappear  then follow them down the stairs, across another corridor, around a corner and down an escalator. To a deserted platform. Where there isn't a shuttle--not the bus I'm expecting anyway--but a train. To the terminal I just hiked away from and to another. Luckily there's a phone labelled tourist information. It rings and rings and rings. Someone picks up and hangs up. Welcome to Paris.
I plant myself in front of someone coming down the escalator, someone wearing a security tag. He looks askance at being accosted but answers my questions none-the-less. I'm to take the train to Terminal 3 to the Roissy bus platform. I do this and end up in the middle of a central transportation hub with trains leading into the city but no sign of a bus. But there is a tiny tourist information desk with an actual person sitting there. She directs me to a door leading outside.
To multiple buses and the dreaded ticket machine. I do have some smaller Euro notes but am wary to let them be sucked up into a mechanical void, leaving me without correct change and stranded at the airport. Now it's just a question until someone else comes along to be a guinea pig with their money. It doesn't take long for a native Parisian to come along and by then, there are also a few anxious Japanese peering over as he enters his pin. I can take it from there but still question the driver as I haul my bag up the stairs.
Il ne prends plus l'argent pour les billets? He looks at me as if I'm an idiot as it's obvious I have my ticket in hand. And for the unwary young American who doesn't know any better? He waves his hand towards the machine and closes the doors, leaving her to figure things out and wait for another bus.
I'm settled in nicely at the front with a full vista of the ride into the city. But first, a 30 minute tour of each and every terminal. Including the one I hiked over from. Oh well. At least I have the best seat on the bus.
When I wake up, we're at the gates of Paris. And I'm treated to the ugly outskirts where I would never ever go on my own. I'm amazed at how fast an unwieldy bus can actually go and how wieldy it can become in the hands of the right driver, taking our monolith into streets made for scooters and Smart cars. If I had a cloth in hand, I could wipe the apartment windows flying by, just outside.
Then suddenly, it's there: our final stop and the Opera. I haul down my bag and stand there agape like the overawed tourist I am.