It took me two hours from the Charles De Gaulle Airport to reach the center of the French capital.
Statistics bear out the cabbie.
About 3 million cars enter and depart daily this city of more than 2 million people and most main arteries are jammed with traffic throughout the day. This is not the Paris that I knew back in the early and mid-1970s, when automobiles blended into the landscape rather than detracted from it. Years ago, Parisians and tourists alike strolled where a highway now borders the picturesque banks of the Seine River. The major avenues were always bustling. Today, even many of the narrow side streets are clogged with traffic into the wee hours of the morning.