Yeah Paris is great as a cool, old, European city with lots of history. If you like just hiking around cities it's great. I can imagine if you go into it thinking it is like some French tourist resort, you will be disappointed.

*Blackpool

They didn't actually ban cars. Only reduced traffic to certain areas.

While there is tons of nice place/stuff to do in Paris, many people see it as a perfect, romantic, ideal whatever city, and a visit there the trip of a lifetime.

Paris is a 10 million inhabitants urban area with all the associated problems,

Imagine thinking you're in the perfect city and being stuck in a crowded train, then in traffic, and falling in any possible tourist traps, from the barely legal but legal low quality, high price restaurant to the pickpocketsand other petty crime

Paris has been romanticized a lot in media, to the point where the Japanese embassy has to have staff on hand to handle the dispair of Japanese tourists visiting and getting disappointed.

I remember Paris being a pleasant large Western city, but it is still a large Western city with all that it entails.

Screenshot of all the interesting places I have been or want to visit in France. Note the lack of dots in Paris. There are far, far nicer places to spend your time in France

I'd always heard people talk about how dirty Paris is, but it was so clean when I visited last year. Admittedly my point of comparison is San Francisco, but still.