The Basilica of Sacré-Coeur in Paris’ Montmartre area has overlooked the city since 1914. Today, the artists who frequented its main square in the 1960s are gone, replaced by food vendors. Photo by Sean X . Liu

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Sixty years ago, a year after graduating from college, a friend and I decided to enter a graduate program at the Sorbonne of the University of Paris.

We lived in the city for a year, making friends and memories. It was an unforgettable experience, one that shaped my view of living abroad and foreign cultures.

Last May, I returned to Paris for a short stay while I could still get around. I am 85 years old and wanted to travel before my body takes me out of the comfort zone.

Of course, I was thrilled to revisit Paris’ many art museums, churches, bistros and cafés. But my main purpose was to observe how the city had changed from my memories of six decades ago.

To smooth my journey, I made a reservation with Road Scholar for an educational travel adventure. The tour advertised seven active days in Paris, but I arrived a day before the group and remained one day after it departed.

I noticed the first difference before I even reached the city. As I traveled from Charles de Gaulle Airport, I noted the immense growth of the Parisian suburbs. Office buildings rose above the imposed height limits for structures in the city center, and numerous apartment buildings provided new nesting places for the labor force.

When I reached the city, I discovered a very pleasant change. Gone was the debris in the gutters and the stench that would sometimes greet one’s nostrils when walking down the street. The presence of covered garbage bins has taken care of the smell, and Paris did a major cleanup when it hosted the Olympic games last summer.

Back to the Marais

The Marais district, where our tour stayed at the four-star hotel Les Jardins du Marais, is the oldest section of Paris and was once home to the largest Jewish population in France. It was also across the Seine from the Sorbonne, where I enrolled in a program designed to prepare foreign students to teach French culture.

The cobblestone side streets looked much as they did years ago, but this time, I had to tread carefully to avoid a trip or fall.

If one looked up rather than down, the prevalence of graffiti was impossible to miss. Either very little graffiti existed in the early 1960s or I was oblivious to it as a young student. Practically every open space was covered with black scrawl or colorful abstract creations. Occasionally I noticed an attempted artistic depiction or message, but most of the graffiti, to my eyes, was scribble — a small change, but one that surprised me.

One perk of my recent trip was the abundant hot water at the hotel. When my friend and I first arrived in Paris as students, we resided with a French woman who lived north of the Arc de Triomphe. Upon arrival, she warned us that we could only take a bath twice a week because a heater over the tub had to be fired up to get the costly hot water.

More crowds at museums

During this year’s stay, I visited six art museums. In my student days, the art museums were either free or substantially discounted for students.

On my first full day on my own, I visited the Picasso Museum, housed in a stately mansion in the Marais.

I had never seen so many people crowded into each room — a rude contrast to my visits in times past. I had to inch my way sideways to make it through the museum, and getting close enough to read the descriptions of the artwork on the plaques was often impossible.

To top off the experience, all the bodies turned the museum into a sweat box. It was not the pleasant experience I had anticipated.

Then I remembered that I was in Paris a week before the popular Paris Open tennis tournament began, so people were pouring into the city from all over the world, flocking to one of its most popular art museums.

Advantages of group tours

Once I joined the tour, everything became a bit easier. Two very experienced guides provided us with entrance passes to the museums, enabling us to skip the lines.

Our guides were particularly advantageous in gaining entrance to the “new” Notre Dame, which some 15,000 people visit each day. The restored 680-year-old Gothic cathedral, which burned in 2019, reopened this year. Its restoration was miraculous: The domed ceiling was clean and elegant, and the stained-glass windows were back in place but shining more brilliantly than I remembered. It is as though the cathedral was restored to its youth.

The white Basilica of the Sacré-Coeur continues to stand out on the Paris skyline, but the artists and their easels that were features of the main square have mostly been replaced by food stalls.

Fine dining

A person can’t visit Paris without mentioning its cuisine. Not surprising is the presence of American fast-food restaurants. In my student days, when I craved a hamburger, I went to the American Drugstore on the Champs-Elysées. Today, I can visit McDonald’s or Burger King (of course, I avoided fast-food establishments in favor of traditional French fare).

On my first night, I went out to dinner at Bofinger, which had been my favorite restaurant in the Marais. As a student, it was a splurge, but I was ready for a self-indulgent treat. It was famous for its coq au vin, and my mouth watered imagining that delicious chicken dish. To my disappointment, it no longer appears on the menu, replaced by vol-au-vent, chicken fingers in a pastry nest. Although it was quite good, I would have preferred the dish from my memory.

While it is still possible to find the formerly popular student meal of ham and cheese on half a baguette, it is not even mentioned on café menus. The popular go-to food today is a croque monsieur: grilled cheese with ham and béchamel sauce.

Today’s young Parisians and international students who crowd the outdoor cafés in the evening drink beer, not wine. I thought perhaps they drank beer because it was less expensive, but I was told the taste of beer is simply preferred, and the beverage has become very popular.

All the French people I encountered were gracious, interesting and patient with my pidgin French. None exhibited the standoffish anti-foreigner behavior American visitors have attributed to Parisians in the past.

Because of the people, the food, my guides and the unfading beauty of the city of lights, my trip to Paris in 2025 was delightful.

Judith Wortman is a nonfiction writer and a member of the National League of American Pen Women, Inc. and appears in Who’s Who in American Women. She lives at Asbury Methodist Village in Gaithersburg, Maryland.