I, years ago, visited Paris for the first time during one of my Interrail trips - the kind of traveling by train done by many young Europeans in the 1970s and 1980s, and which is still popular - I tried to get to see one of the most famous sights in the city, the Arc de Triomphe at the centre of Place Charles de Gaulle.

And like an arch I walked around that big square, trying to find an entrance. Surely there was an underground passage that would lead to the Arc itself. There must have been, but I just couldn’t locate it. In frustation, really wanting to get all the way there, I decided in my youthful foolhardiness to take my chances and navigate my way through the busy traffic. I almost got run over by a car or two. Heard a few honks here and there. But I did get there!

Years later, I visited Paris once again. This time with my two sons in their twenties. And this time everything went by the book. We took the underground passage that surely had always been there, and got quite comfortably all the way to the middle of the square where the Arc de Triomphe stood in all its majesty. It was a warm autumn day, so we sat down on one of the stone benches lining up the monument, watching the cars passing by with speed and in what almost looked like some sort of orderly fashion but really looked like bordering on chaos. Took a few photographs too of course. And some video of the traffic.

And I couldn’t help wondering whether the traffic was as crazy that day, years ago.