Returning to Notre-Dame: Paris After the Restoration
We were in Paris two days before Notre-Dame reopened. Two days. We had watched the restoration unfold on documentaries back home in Arizona, we had stood outside those scaffolded walls at Christmas, and then we flew home without ever getting through the door. So this summer, after seven weeks through Spain and Portugal, we did the only sensible thing — we went back.
Two Days Too Late — and Why We Had to Come Back
If you saw our Christmas videos, you already know this story. Notre-Dame reopened in December 2024, five years after the 2019 fire, and we arrived just before the doors opened to the public. We watched the city get ready for it. We just didn’t get to be part of it.
We have been to Paris many times over the years, and we have always come to Notre-Dame. We were here right before the fire. We watched the progress from the States the way a lot of you probably did — documentaries, news clips, the spire going back up. And somewhere in all of that we decided this wasn’t a “someday” trip. We had to come see it.
So we did. Funny things happen when you leave Portugal with no fixed plan.
Inside Notre-Dame: Light Where There Used to Be Shadow
Guys. The transformation is incredible. It is like visiting a whole new church.
Notre-Dame was always grand and vast and imposing — but nobody would have described it as light and airy, and that is exactly what it is now. There used to be a kind of brooding darkness to the place. Now it is full of light. The cleaned stone, the restored stained glass — spectacular. Everything has been done so sensitively.
What struck us most had nothing to do with religion. You do not have to be religious, or even spiritual, to walk in there and feel something. It is an incredible piece of architecture, and it is a testament to what people can do when they come together around a common interest. Thousands of craftspeople — stonemasons, glaziers, carpenters, people who gave five years of their lives to this — and you can feel every bit of it standing there.
We sat outside on a bench afterward, mostly because our feet were tired, and neither of us said much for a while.
Along the Seine, and Up the Iron Lady
Leaving Notre-Dame and walking along the Seine is one of our favorite things to do in Paris, day or night. The bridges are beautiful and each one is different — look closely and you’ll spot a big letter N worked into the ironwork on some of them. We’ll let you guess which emperor that one is about.
And when your feet finally give out, there is nothing like a gentle river cruise to give you a completely different perspective on the city.
The next day we went up the Eiffel Tower. We bought summit tickets, which means two separate elevators to get all the way to the top. A word of honest warning: those elevators are small and they can get very packed, and you are going very high. If you are claustrophobic or afraid of heights, factor that in before you buy.
The views are the reward. Way off in the distance, up on the hill, you can see Montmartre and Sacré-Cœur — which, as you’ll see in a minute, matters to this story.
Our rule is usually ride up and walk down, and Grandpa Bobby, being an architect, loved seeing the inner workings of the tower on the way — especially how the elevators move. What we should point out is that you cannot walk down from the summit. You take the elevator to the second observation deck, and from there you can walk down to the esplanade. You can also just take the elevator all the way down, and after the day we’d had, we understand why people do.
Our feet were pretty sore by the bottom.
Rue Cler: You Actually Can Go Back
People love to say you can never go back. That is not actually true.
Back in 2006, on our very first trip to Paris together, we stayed on Rue Cler — a market street tucked into the neighborhood near the Champ de Mars. We loved that street then and we love it now: the fromagerie, the fruit stands, the vendors calling to each other, the whole thing feeling like a village dropped into the middle of a very big city. That’s something we find all over Paris, actually — little villages inside the larger one. It reminded us of the opening scene of Beauty and the Beast.
The restaurant where we ate our very first breakfast in Paris in 2006 is still there. So is the little hotel we stayed in. We suspect their prices have changed a bit since then.
One piece of advice, and we mean this sincerely. When you go into the shops — the fromagerie, the boulangerie, the pâtisserie — remember that the people there consider their businesses their homes. Greet them. Bonjour, bonsoir, whatever the time of day. They love it, and it changes the entire experience. It costs you nothing and it is the single easiest way to be a good guest in someone else’s country.
Also: the fruit here is amazing. We seriously considered whether a watermelon would fit in a suitcase.
Sainte-Chapelle and an Olympic Flame That Isn’t Fire
The Royal Chapel of Sainte-Chapelle is one of our favorite places in Paris, and it always will be. It is the absolute height of Gothic architecture — the walls essentially dissolve into planes of colored glass. We don’t rush through it. We like to just stand there and admire the space.
It was built in the 1200s by Louis IX specifically to house the crown of thorns. That relic lives at Notre-Dame now, in a new reliquary made for the reopening — which means our two favorite churches in Paris turned out to be part of the same story. We did not plan that.
From there we went to the Tuileries Garden to see the Olympic cauldron. Ever since watching the 2024 Games we had wanted to see it in person, because it was so unlike any cauldron before it: the first that did not burn fossil fuel. The “flame” is water droplets lit by high-powered LEDs, and it rises over the garden at night. Ingenious is the only word for it.
Montmartre: A Boy from a Coal Mining Town
We visited Sacré-Cœur with a few thousand of our closest friends.
This is exactly why we usually recommend traveling in shoulder season rather than the height of summer. In seven weeks through Spain and Portugal, this was the first time we really felt the summer crush. When you come off-season, Montmartre is full of artists at their easels and it is genuinely charming — we know that’s hard to picture when you’re shoulder to shoulder on the steps, but it’s true.
And yes — Grandpa Bobby had said, standing on the Eiffel Tower, that we probably weren’t going to fit Montmartre in. You would think after all these years he’d have learned. Grandpa Scott gets his way.
Here is why it matters so much to him. Grandpa Scott grew up in a small coal mining town, and as a kid he watched An American in Paris. After the war, the characters lived in a garret right up in this neighborhood, and to a boy in a mining town it looked impossibly romantic. He fancied himself a writer back then, and he pictured himself up here in a garret, writing away.
He has had other dreams, and those came true. But that was a dream he had — and standing up there on the hill, you could see it on his face.
One Last Dinner, and a Train Under the Channel
Our last night, Grandpa Scott got into a full wrestling match with a bowl of French onion soup. He asked to have it edited out of the video. It was too cute to cut, so it stayed in. Grandpa Bobby went with a giant bowl of mussels and no drama whatsoever.
At the next table, a man loudly took apart the waiter over the price of the meal and thoroughly embarrassed his wife. Folks — it’s tourist season in Paris. It’s going to cost some money. The food was delicious. Enjoy the moment. You flew all this way for the moment.
The next morning we were at Gare du Nord with our bags, boarding the train for London. A quick trip under the Channel and we’d be there, checking into the St. Pancras hotel for a short but very good stay.
Paris gave us what we came back for. We finally walked into Notre-Dame. We found our street from 2006 still standing. And Grandpa Scott got his hill.
We didn’t get everything in — we never do. But that’s fine. There is always a reason to come back to Paris.
Watch the full Paris adventure on our YouTube channel — the walk along the Seine, the view from the summit, and Grandpa Scott versus the French onion soup, all of it. If you enjoy traveling along with us, subscribe, give the video a thumbs up, and let us know in the comments where we should go next.
Follow along day to day on Instagram and TikTok @twogaygrandpastravel, and catch our podcast Travel Your Heart on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Next up: a day and a half in London. How much can two grandpas see in that little time? More than you’d think.
Travel Your Heart
Grandpa Bobby &
Grandpa Scott
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