They launch the boats with sticks and watch them sail, waiting for them to come back to another part of the basin's edge, so they can push them onward again. When it's calm, the game is dreamy and placid.
"But the wind picked up the last time we were here," a neighborhood mother tells me. "The children were running fast to catch up to their boats."
The French dote on their offspring, and there's no shortage of traditional entertainments. Despite the erosions of modern life, traditions linger. For any visitor to Paris, with or without kids in tow, the popular attractions and pastimes for children offer a window on the culture.
Family life in Paris revolves around its neighborhoods, and the parks in many arrondissements feature three diversions in close proximity: a playground with swings and climbing lad ders, a puppet theater, and a carousel.
Besides all these, Luxembourg Garden has its antique sailboats, which date back nearly a century. "They need constant repairing," says Claire Credeville, a young woman who runs the boat rental concession from a pushcart. She points to a metal bowsprit bent from bumping the bank of the basin.
The sailboats sometimes get stuck against the side of the fountain in the middle of the basin. Usually a breeze will dislodge them. "But once in a while I have to wade out there," says Credeville. "The water is thigh high."
The oldest attraction in Luxembourg Garden is the vintage carousel with its ring game. The children ride wooden animals: weather-beaten horses, a reindeer, a giraffe, an elephant. As the carousel whirls, children seated on the outer row of animals use sticks to spear metal rings that an attendant dispenses from a rack.
I tell a parent how amazed I am that this carousel has been in operation since 1900. A grandmother from the neighborhood says the ride is at least a decade older than that.
"My grandmother was born in 1883, and she rode on this carousel as a child," says Françoise Bon. "My mother did, too, and so did I, and my children after me. And now my grandchildren. I was never any good at the rings, but my grandchildren are."
