The six of us ambled through a book market, then crossed the Seine, passed Notre Dame and wandered into the Bastille section. The girls went off to a street marche in search of scarves while Marc, Mike and I sat at a café at Bastille and listened to a lecture in French; enjoyed every second of it and understood not a word of it.

The 2 ½ hour tour is a slow ride through the ancient canals of Paris. There are four double locks, with a 75 foot difference between the first and the last lock. The tour started out in the dark, eerie, cool stillness under Place du Bastille. The boat's speakers piped out Edith Piaf and the soundtrack to the movie "1492." We all enjoyed watching the boat rise as the swinging gates of the locks opened and closed, stopping pedestrian and vehicle traffic along the way. It is a spectacularly gorgeous lazy Sunday afternoon in Paris, and we saw hundreds of folks in the parks and along the boulevards enjoying the sunshine. A band played on one of the bridges. The locks were built in the early 1800s after the Revolution. The earliest locks were "man-powered," then driven by electric motors; now they are hydraulic.

After the canal tour, we took the Metro to Tour Eiffel and mingled with the thousands of rugby fans, tourists and gendarmes, then walked down Champs du Mars to a bistro where we enjoyed pommes frites, anchovies and wine.

Had a fun evening with our friends, then wandered back down the Rue Mouffetard to Rue des Ecoles to our respective hotels. We discovered that there was a plumbing/flooding problem in M&A's room and at 1 a.m. they were temporarily moved to another hotel on Rue Pascal. Other than that snag, it was a wonderful day of fun, exploration, terrific weather, delicious food and great friendship.

At 1:30 a.m. Carol and I finally fell into bed and coma-like sleep.

Next Day