The Birds and the Boats

Sam: After we went to the Louvre, we went to a park. First we fed birds, a guy was feeding the birds and he taught us to hold our fingers straight up and pinch the bread between our fingers and the birds would fly up and eat the bread off our fingers. The pigeons sometimes, they would try to fly up on C's fingers, but they never did it to me.

C: The birds claws were actually quite sharp and sometimes a pigeon would try to land on me. The old man was quite nice, but he was always silent. He showed us how to hold up our arms and hands and fingers and feed the birds, and then after a while he gave us the rest of his crumbs and left.

Sam: The boats, I thought were really cool. At first, there were two people sailing boats, we thought they owned the boats, but then we walked around the circle, and saw that there was a boat rental, so we rented boats. There were boats and sticks. What you would do is push the boat out, and run over to where it sailed to, and then you'd push it out again. So, they were mainly directed by the wind.

C: We rented some boats for a half hour for 2 Euros (about $1.50). And we would push the boats away from the side, and when they hit land again, we would turn them around with our hand, or sometimes with the sticks, and then we would push them out into the fountain.

[Mom's comment: This was a wonderful pause in our day. Many people sat around the huge fountain, watching the sailboats drift along, as the children ran around the edges. It was a moment in our trip we'll probably all remember for a long time, and such a simple pleasure! And, the sailboats were so creatively designed, each with its own hand-made sail. Really quite a unique experience.]