Sunday 14 September was our last day in Paris, and getting close to the end of the year-long voyage. We paid our mooring bill at the Capitanerie and set off through the Port de l'Arsenal lock, and turned right onto the Seine for our 'lap of honour' of Paris. We had to do this - our own Last Tango - to cruise down the Seine and past the icons: Notre Dame, the Musee d'Orsay, under the Pont Neuf, and past the Eiffel Tower. We had to finish on a high note, and we did...

Our third day in Paris started with a near-drowning. We were sitting in bed having our first coffee of the day when we heard splashing outside the boat. It sounded like someone was swimming right beside Liberty, but you'd have to be mad to swim in the marina water. And yet we could definitely hear vigorous splashing and bubbling. We went on deck in our dressing gowns and leaned over the rail. There on the swim platform, having just managed to drag itself to safe...

On the morning of 11 September there was a man wearing a blue tracksuit top in the Pigalle area of Paris. It's a somewhat sleazy area, known for its sex shops as much as its art nouveau connections, but this man was thinking only of the art of pickpocketing. He looked around, as he'd been doing for a while, and spotted an obviously-touristy couple going into a café. He observed them order coffees and croissants in halting French, though he cared not for their ...

We arrived in Paris through the arse end, so it was appropriate that we moored at a marina called Port de l'Arsenal. Fate sometimes does that. When I say 'arse end', I don't mean to be unkind to the city, but it is by all accounts much prettier and more awesome to cruise into Paris on the Seine from the north. Which of course we didn't do, since our position meant we had to approach the city of romance from the south. It wasn't all bad by any means, but it was...