Boats and French-Speaking Ducks

Some of the most amazing things we did in Paris when we took the kids were the simplest, and the things I remember best.

Our apartment in the 16th arrondisement was immediately adjacent to the Bois de Boulogne on the West side of the City (Port Dauphine Metro stop on line 2).One
day we packed up cheese,  fois gras, three baguettes, pain du chocolat, water bottles and the first fraises of the season.  (Strawberries! Strawberries! Smaller than American strawberries and sweet sweet sweet!)  We walked over to “le bois” (translation: “the woods”) from our apartment to check out les bateaux.

We marched right up, plunked down…who knows…a bunch of Euros (couldn’t have been that much, we are pretty cheap) and rented two boats for two hours.  I was with my two teenage boys (over-exuberant, I promise you) and my husband was with my mother and daughter.

I do remember spending the better part of the afternoon saying, “No, row in THAT direction … No! We are too close to that other boat!”  We rowed to a grassy, shaded knoll, ate a dreamy lunch, lay under the trees and looked at the sky.   Along the path of the waterway, we went under arched bridges which were right out of Monet’s paintings and I felt like I was the most privileged woman in the world to be there.  I ached for a lace and ribbon-trimmed umbrella and big floppy hat like in all those Jane Austin movies. Even my mother loved it.

The Bois du Boulogne has a charming amusement park for adults and children called the “Jardin d’Acclimatation,” with mini- rollercoasters (very clean in case you’re wondering), as well as birds and other animals. Keeping my disparate group happy was sometimes challenging. On this day, everyone was happy.

On another day we took the Metro over to the 6th arrondissement and went to the Jardin du Luxembourg.  Here’s one thing I missed doing in my childhood: renting a stick boat for five Euros.

A boat with a stick.

Why a boat with a stick?  Because a boat with a stick takes you back to a time when families spent every Sunday at parks feeding ducks, once again carrying parasols (I must have a real thing for parasols – I had no idea!) .  So here we were in a beautiful place where we were pretending we were not American, and watching the children with the stick boats, the couples canoodling and listening to ducks speak French.

(When I go to France I love to hear the ducks speak French and when I was in Copenhagen the elephants spoke Danish.  Fascinating!)

It was a Georges Seurat “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” moment.

And it was Thursday.

For two hours the children romped and skipped around the large round fountain – even the teenage boys – following their little boats, pushing them back into the center, smiling, giggling.

Never before in my life did I want to be nine years old again, so much as I did that afternoon.

Now I am absolutely in love with little boats.  I am in love with arched bridges. I am in love with French strawberries.  I am in love with canoodling.  (Is that redundant?)

I am apparently in love with parasols.

But the French-speaking ducks.   They make me swoon.