Paris en Famille: Jardin du Luxembourg

There are certain streets, bistros, parks that madly truly deeply make me feel I’m in Paris: Jardin du Luxembourg is one of them.

Saturday was no exception. Hot of the TGV, overload of luggage dumped at the apartment, we hot-footed it to Jardin du Luxembourg: the boys needed an energy burner and I wanted to unabashedly revel in that delicious feeling of ‘being in Paris’.

When @luefkens suggested renting a old-fashioned sailing boat – good-value entertainment at €3.20 an hour – to float on Palais de Luxembourg’s fish pond I was a tad skeptical. What on earth could be so fascinating about watching the wind puff a toy boat across the water for an hour?

Boy was I wrong. The boys loved it, jumped with joy, screamed in delight as they sprinted madly from one side of the monumental pond to the other in hot pursuit of their yo-yoing boats, nudging them away from the edge with a simple bamboo stick and screaming in excited horror as their vessel veered perilously towards the fountain in the pond’s middle. Pure unabated old-fashioned pleasure enjoyed by Parisian families since 1922.

And what did I do? Run around in circles after the pair of them (as did every parent there) trying frantically to keep them in sight!

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