The First Time I Saw Paris: Memories of Dreams Come True recounts the author's first trip to Paris in the summer of 1963 between his Junior and Senior years as a French major at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, in Part One of the book. He had been awarded a Carnegie Foundation Fellowship to spend three months abroad doing research for them on a particular topic that had won him the fellowship, from May through July, with Paris as his main destination. Afterwards, he was to write a paper about his findings for the Carnegie Foundation. He was thrilled to be going to Europe for the first time, and especially excited at the prospect of visiting the city that he had long dreamed of and that is the center of French culture, history, literature, and art. It was a fantastic, eye-opening trip. Part Two recounts other memorable trips to Paris, throughout France, to the USSR in 1985 and to Greece in 1994, as well as to other European countries.