Waiting

for the boat to take off.
Tour on the Canal St. Martin (not St. Michel, as I falsely said on Flickr). A very warm day and we were expecting some calm hours on the boat underneath trees that were 100 years old, on a canal that has been built "by" Napoleon and goes from La Villette which was a village outside of Paris at the time to the bassin de la Bastille and thus connecting the Marne to the Seine. It was warm and crowded on the boat, this trip not being an insider tip anymore, clearly, as the boat took about 160 people and a nice lady flooded us with informations on everything we saw in French and English. So, not as quiet I had hoped for.

There were a lot of people lining the borders of the canal, lying in the sun, picnicking, reading, and doing lots of other stuff. Just an ordinary weekend picture , I think. So all the pics were put into the Flickr account, if you want to see the waterway that has three turning bridges and bridges that have to be lifted, as well as 4 locks before you are at Seine level.
The last 1.8 km were in a tunnel underneath the streets of Paris, built by Haussmann. I wish I knew how to delete the second of the flickr pics of this tunnel, but I don't. In the end, we got blocked by the Techno Parade and a row of very stern policemen who would not let us go over to our metro station. So, another quite long walk had to be completed to get home, bad knee or not.

I was so attracted by this little face. As I don't have any grandchildren yet, I discover a new interest in the little ones...