From the National Geographic blog Intelligent Travel:
Waxing nostalgia about the bygone days of Paris is hardly new or rare, but that doesn’t make us eat up pitch-perfect prose on the City of Light any less. And when it’s written by the likes of Pulitzer Prize winner Stanley Karnow, who does it with such je ne sais quoi, we’re mere putty in his hands. Karnow—father of one of our favorite Traveler photographers, Catherine—penned a lovely account of living in Paris for ten years as a young man, starting in 1947, called Paris in the Fifties. We checked in with him recently to get his pulse on Paris, then and now.
How has Paris changed since you lived there in the 1950s?
You can’t afford it! There’s a phrase, one I use in my book: Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose—the more things change, the more things stay the same. Things have changed tremendously in Paris since my first time, but yet there’s a lot that hasn’t changed. It certainly still ranks as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and its beauty has been greatly enhanced in recent years.
More here. [Thanks to Marilyn Terrell.]
