I've never been a particular fan of the French. On that visit 40 years ago I found the people uniformly rude and Paris, at least, quite dirty. Not so this time. The people were great. The city is clean. The outdoor pictures I took can be seen here.
ML/NJ
I was in Paris about a year and a half ago, and in Nice on that trip, several times previously, and about 6 months ago.
In Paris, we stayed at a hotel within 500m of the Eiffel Tower. We generally had a great time, though we did have an episode where, while taking a double decker tour bus around the city, we were substantially delayed by some bogus African Muslims doing a street protest over this, that, or the other. The security force presence was substantial.
In Nice, these has been an increasing Muslim presence over the last 5-6 years since we’ve been visiting, but it’s generally been a non-issue. Then, a month after we were there this year, there was the truck attack with great loss of life. We had probably crossed the section of the Promenade de Anglais where the attack occurred a dozen or so times on that trip. And we spent a fair amount of time on the Med next to the Promenade about a kilometer west of where the attack started (attack proceeded west to east). Unnerving, at best.
The point being that while it’s not a Blade Runnerish dystopian future with Islamics, and there are still great restaurants and such, there are serious events happening and worse storm clouds for the future if something doesn’t change, and start changing soon.