I was in Paris about two weeks ago, during the Euro 2016 finals. It was a bit disconcerting to come out of a church and find half a dozen soldiers in full gear doing a search of the perimeter. Two poking their guns into dark corners, two looking more widely around the area, and the other 2 covering the first 4. I neither felt safer nor more under threat - it just felt a little surreal to have an army squad doing their maneuvers outside St Sulpice. At the Eiffel Tower there were barricades, security gates, metal detectors, soldiers, police - the whole nine yards (as we hurried past to reach the bistrot we had booked).
But I enjoyed rummaging in the flea market at Port de Vanves where there were hundreds out on a Saturday morning, and not a soldier or policeman in sight. Not all of Paris was in lock down, and I felt no less safe than on any of my other 4 or 5 visits. We have already booked for a week in France next April for ANZAC Day, where we are taking a family group ranging across 3 generations. We still intend to go, believing the odds are in our favour mathematically, and we have a duty to commemorate those who faced such terrible odds 100 years ago.