Again with the late night we're not out of the apartment much before 11:30. We stroll up to the Arch and discover a massive queue to climb it, forget it. Our plan for the day at this stage is some breakfast then off to d'Orsay. But we discover Laduree doesn't have anything like the queues today as it has had on other days. It's just coming on 1pm we walt straight into a table - boom - Sunday Brunch is ordered a few minutes later and we're set.
Never doing brunch at home again, 1pm brunch doesn't start to 12pm, no judgement whatsoever in order it at 1pm. In fact once it turns up at our table, it start appearing at a lot of others, perhaps everyone has been waiting. Ridiculously delicious breakfast treats followed by kind of wicked pastries you can never justify are the order for the next hour or so that we sit soaking in the opulance.
While sitting we discover that d'Orsay is free the first Sunday of every month (tomorrow) and whilst the crowds sound silly, not having to queue for tickets sounds blissful. We decide to skip d'Orsay for today and head to Ile St Louis and St Germain for some mid and left-bank strolling. Too full form brunch to go hunting the Boulangerie and Glaces shops we're keen to find in Ile St Louis we head straight for the Luxembourg Gardens to wear off some of our brunch. It's only minutes before Max spies the sailing boats and hits us up for a turn. He has a ball for the next half hour while I imagine him falling in every few minutes as he leans ever further into the pond to trim his boat. He has the pirate ship making collisions a goal.
We head back to the river through St Germain, stopping here and there for coffee, beer and shops before making it to the end and to Notre Dame, we go back to Shakespeare and Co to think about that Candid edition Max was impressed with earlier in the week, but by now there is a massive queue for the shop and they are only allowing a certain number of people in at a time. 
Gab hunts Parisian scenes from the stalls along the river while Emerson is convinced she'll find an old Orangina ad she can put up in her room. 
The sky is looking dark... Tinkle, tinkle, burst - the rain is hammering down. We take cover in a cosy italian place, they almost turn us away but I think the kids won them over. A little pizza and beer help us pass the thrashing rain. It's gone within half an hour, but what havoc it wreaks. The restaurant is booked for a wedding, just after we sit down the reception party arrives complete with the bride making her way through the rain in her gown. A few minutes after that a pre-booked tour group arrives, they were going to be dining in the street front, but this is suddenly flooded. As soon as the rain stops we get out of their way and head to Pont de l'Archevêché.
In the junky tourist spot across the road that owner sells both locks, and will rent you him engraving machine to do your own art work. We have a go, the kids are neater than me, then we head over to the bridge to see where we can attach it. On the way across Gab mentions that she's heard they cut thousands of these locks off each month to make room, I think I'd heard the same with a particular bridge under weight stress recently. I had previously thought perhaps you should just throw it in the river, as I was leaning over to see if you could attach to the back, that's exactly what happened, it just slipped out and plopped down in to the Seine below. I tried to rationalise that was the smartest place for it if it was just going to get cut off and thrown away next week, but I still felt stupid :) Gab and the Kids threw the three keys in and we headed off to check out this award winning ice cream and boulangerie on Ile St Louis.
We found the Ice Cream almost straight away, then again, and again, and again. It turns out that Berthillon Ice Cream which is the city wide repeat ice cream supremo worked out they could beat all those queues by selling their ice cream to everyone in the area, allowing everyone to hangout a Berthillon banner and confuse the ill informed tourist, like me. Anyway we had the right product in the right neighbourhood, just from the wrong store.
A little further along we found the award winning Boulangerie that Gab had read about, meant to be the best bread in all of Paris. We couldn't tell you though, he was all closed up for the Summer! I can't think of a better way to sum up this city. Summer holidays are so important you'll shut down your award winning business for a month to go hang out on the coast. But better than that, great bread is so important and the city so expectant that everyone will abandon the city for the coast during summer, they passed a law requiring all bakeries to co-ordinate their holidays so that if you shut down your boulangerie for a break, you have to ensure your closest one is going to remain open, there is an official city form that they need to display in the window saying when they will be away, and were patrons should go for their bread in the meantime!