You can actually swim in the Seine

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After several months on hectic Montmartre, the last couple of weeks have been completely relaxing.

We're living on a houseboat on the Seine - nestled in between Ile de la Jatte and Boulevard Boudon - in the northwestern part of Paris.

The area - Neuilly-sur-Seine - is among the most affluent in all of Paris and some of the houseboats moored along the quai are almost as big as aircraft carriers, but not our little raft.

It is petite, but it has everything you need - a small bath room, an even smaller galley and a bunkbed we can rise up with a pulley, when we need the space for sitting down 

- and most important: 

It has a deck, where we can stay all day, sketching and reading and watching the scullers glide by

Everything is constructed by our generous host Captain Bob, who leads an exciting life - half the year on a (somewhat grander) houseboat next to ours, the other half in the Rockies, where he has invented a sport he calls 'Ski Frisbee'  ( https://youtu.be/oPuswOHl29s ).

Walking along the quais of central Paris we have never - even on the hottest of days - contemplated a dip in the probably extremely  polluted river.

Here we're up-water from the  city and its sewers  - and, as we feel a little bit safer, we often take a swim with our neighbors from the other houseboats.
This evening, as most evenings during the last couple of weeks, we sit on the deck, drinking a sundowner.

The mint on top of the mojitos is plucked from a bucket filled with herbs, which floats next to the boat.

Can life be much better than this?


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