Plan D

Friends of ours, Yavin and Sharon, had been to Paris earlier this June with their family and their recommendation was to spend an afternoon with the toy sailboats at les Jardin de Luxembourg. Our guide book suggested the same. So, on Saturday afternoon late we wandered to the gardens, but the trip took a while as we kept getting distracted. We arrived at the gardens, saw the boats on the lake, and eagerly approached the man who rented the boats. We were 10 minutes too late. The last rental was at 6:00 (all boats out by 6:30) and it was 6:10. Ouch! We got to sit there and watch the others having fun. We'd come back the next day. So off it was to Tour Eiffel...but that is another story entirely...ending at 1:00 AM!

The next day, Sunday we showed up at the garden at 2:00. No boats and no man who rents the boats. In my broken French I spoke with a gendarme to ask what was up and he was puzzled too. Owen was crushed since nearly every hour of the day in between the two visits he reminded us of our upcoming trip to the boats. He and Gina went home, as he was feeling fed up. Lily and I went to see the finish of the Tour de France.

On Monday, we made the garden one of our stops. Now there is a saying in English which goes, "third time is a charm", meaning that patience and perseverance will pay dividends. Tristan, our French foreign exchange student in high school, informed us that the French saw it differently. Their saying goes (in English), "never two without three". The French are either true statisticians at heart (seeing the trend in the data early on) or wonderfully pathos. Owen was living the English version, I was fearing the French version. Afterall, we were in Paris. I suggested to Owen that we have a Plan B in case we were disappointed. Plan B was going to be Paris sewers tour. We arrived at the gardens...not a boat to be seen on the pond. "Paris is such a rip off!" exclaimed Owen.

We sat in the shade and began discussing Plan B. Owen was trying to look for the bright spot, but he was pretty disappointed. Gina and I succumbed to our internal parental pressure to please the kids and offered up Plan D. Secretly, Lily wondered what had happened to Plan C? Plan D....Disneyland. As it turned out, we could invoke Plan D on Lily's 13th birthday. Lily was up for Plan D. Owen was supercharged by the idea. So Tuesday would be (and was) the day we chose Plan D...and what a day it was. Another one of those in which we did not return to the apartment until 1:00 AM.



BTW, each time we go to the Luxembourg Gardens we are compelled to each ice cream. It is a wonderful consolation prize and is great in the heat (85-90 this week). We have been having sorbet exclusively, and by the time we leave we will have spent a tidy sum on the elixir.

And one more thing. Following the third disappointment on that Monday, we also chose Plan B and wandered the Paris sewers...what a sensory experience! Really interesting, pretty stinky, rather loud...but it made us think twice about drinking water from the Seine.