In 2007 I learned that during La Terreur, the revolutionaries not only beheaded people, but also beheaded statues, especially, statues on cathedrals. Those heads were kept in Musée de Cluny, however, that exhibit was undergoing renovation. In 2017 the whole Cluny was undergoing renovation. The Cluny reopened in 2022.

The roof of Notre-Dame de Paris, caught on fire in 2019, and the reconstruction finished in 2024, this added another reason to go to Paris.

I also felt I wanted to see the four Statues of Liberty, one of which is in the Musée des Arts et Métiers, a place I had never seen.

In 2007, some of the people in the study tour I was on went to the Père-Lachaise, and we walked past the memorials to the German Concentration camps, however, since there were a group of us, I really did not want to slow the group down to really look at them, so I decided the next time I was in Paris I was going to look at them. In 2017 I tried to get back to them, but the cemetery really is a maze and I did not have a good idea of where they were. This year I had a plan, enter the front gate and keep walking to the back wall, then take a left and keep walking to the East Wall. This worked.