I love Paris. It is one of the first places that comes to my mind in the context of "there is no other place I'd rather be". We've been to this wonderful city dozens of times, but for various reasons, only passingly in the last decade and a half. In April of 2025, we made a concerted effort to reacquaint ourselves with Paris. 

The city is still wonderful - there are not enough superlatives to express that. However, in the last few years, it has become significantly more time-consuming to visit the most popular attractions. I remember twenty years ago walking up to the Louvre Pyramid in the afternoon or to Sainte-Chapelle whenever I felt like it, and getting inside in a matter of minutes. These days, with hundreds of online tickets sold for timed entry and then the entrance intervals strictly enforced with time-marked lines, coupled with airport-level security checks that create non-trivial bottlenecks, getting inside a top sight may easily require upward of an hour.

A Saturday in mid-April is definitely a busier time than a Wednesday in January, so unlike Aitia, we weren't able to get into Notre-Dame at all. We actually wanted to buy tickets in advance, but they become available only a few days ahead and get sold out in minutes. On the day, Place Jean-Paul II was almost entirely overtaken by the entry-lane barriers. If that was a "walk-in" line, its visible standstill suggested at least a 90-minute wait; if people in line already possessed prepaid tickets, I doubt there was any chance of an entry without one.

At Sainte-Chapelle, we had prepaid tickets and joined our line about 15 minutes prior to the scheduled time. Roughly 50 people were ahead of us. The line started moving a minute or so after the clock struck the prescribed time, and it took a good 20 minutes for us to progress beyond the security checkpoint. Not awful on balance. There were people already joining the next-slot line while we were still waiting to start moving - they may have been at the head of their line, but would be standing there for at least the next half-hour. There was also a "walk-in" line, from which a couple of dozen people were allowed in towards the end of each half-hour interval - by my unscientific estimation, people joining that line may have been looking at two hours or more before being able to get in.  

We also bought tickets in advance for the Eiffel Tower. There was a semi-perfunctory security check at the perimeter entrance, taking about 10 minutes to pass. My wife walked over to the elevator line and found it to be exceptionally long. She is a fluent French speaker and also has a mobility impairment - she used those two cards to talk an attendant into letting her to the front of the queue, where she struck up a conversation with fellow Americans and learned that they had been waiting in that line for over an hour and a half. She ended up on the second floor at about the same time as my daughter and me.

The two of us always planned to walk up the Tower's stairs. When we approached the stairs line, we were first told to wait by our entry time marker on the side - it was about five minutes prior to our scheduled time. Almost immediately, though, we were allowed into the second security line, which took an additional 15 minutes or so. With the climb itself, we reached the second floor in about 45 minutes after strolling up to that first security checkpoint. I suppose, again, not too awful on balance; in those old times I am nostalgic about, the Eiffel Tower was always one place where you had to budget for at least a 30-minute line to buy tickets... 

At the Louvre, we came over about 20 minutes ahead of our entry time and realized that the line we needed to join had at least two hundred people in it already, and they were moving through the security checkpoint visible inside the Pyramid at a clip of one person every twenty seconds or so. Seeing Mona Lisa in person did not feel worth an investment of an hour-plus in that line to my daughter, so she asked us if we were ok to do something else instead, and since my wife and I have both been to the Louvre many times before, we decided to leave.

I do not have many counter-examples to the above, but I expect that sights below the "must" tier for the majority of the visitors - especially those that lie outside of the core WH zone - can be accessed without that much hassle.

And all of the above should not negate the pleasure of exploring Paris. Walking the banks of the river past the architectural masterpieces and the Bouquinistes, lingering on the bridges, exploring Île de la Cité and Île Saint-Louis (and Île aux Cygnes), stepping away from the river to admire the Invalides, the Grand Palais, the Arc de Triomphe, or La Madeleine, among many others, are all musts in my book. The river cruise on Bateaux-Mouches or Vedettes du Pont Neuf covers almost exactly the extent of the core zone along the river, so it is also a worthwhile activity. And if time permits, definitely invest in exploring the major sights in depth.