Back to work...

...by which, I mean fencing.

The very next morning after the fencing, I travelled back to Paris on the 7am flight.

I trained as usual on Tuesday and Wednesday. I wasn't to be alone in Paris long at least as my friend, Martin, was visiting for the end of the week.

He arrived on Wednesday afternoon (and I still went to training) but afterwards we to the Chameleon Jazz bar, near St. Michel. Over the next couple of days we did all the touristy stuff that I've all but ignored since I've been in Paris - The Eiffel Tower, Musé D'Orsay, The Louvre (although I go there pretty regularly) and all that sort of thing.

...

Thursday night we ate in the Refuge De Fondue. I'd invited David from the Irish College along the day before but for some reason he thought it wasn't a fondue restaurant. I still maintain this was the fault of the temporary insomnia he was suffering when I invited him, rather than my sarcasm. Words cannot express the guilt I felt when after coming all the way over to the restaurant he decided to leave, as he hates fondue.

Eventually we were seated next to a group of Americans, who we got talking to throughout the meal. They'd been there 3 times in a month which is a true testament to Americans fondness for cholesterol. The loudest and most drunk soon pronounced herself to be Irish-American, her parents having left Belfast when the getting was good. A conversation soon erupted, spewed if you will, over the nature of origins. The other Americans, Two Jewish Americans (one Croatian-Jewish American man and one quiet polite Jewish-American girl) and one loud Romanian-American.

Like the congealing cheese in front of us, the conversation soon turned far too heavy, for our tastes and became some sort of rant on the meaning of existence by Romanian-American who was countered by the Irish-American girl telling him he was full of crap. Then there was some sort of debate over the validity of national identities - this nearly crept into questioning the validity of the Jewish-American identity, which was immediately rebuked by the Zionist Croatian-Jewish-American.

Myself and Martin, watched on amused at how these people who were obviously American to us could tie themselves in knots over such a trivial matter such as where their ancestors came from. Anyway, that provided plenty of entertainment for us for the rest of the evening.

...