Paris (Mis) Match

In the paper yesterday was a story about Japanese tourists being so traumatised by their visit to Paris that lots of them have to receive counselling. This struck a chord with me as we went to Paris for my birthday this year and it was a bit disappointing.

I'd been before but never with a partner, and parts of it were great, but it wasn't particularly romantic and the rudeness of lots of the people did make it a bit of grind (and I really did try to speak in French whenever possible). I had a bit of a cafe rage moment with someone smoking in the non-smoking section of a restaurant. I'm not normally that bothered by other people's smoke but when you are eating, have specifically requested non-smoking and the person is turning towards you to blow out her smoke, it is annoying. After asking her (in my best French) several times, I was very close to tipping my drink over her head. (OH was rather terrified by this point, as I'm not usually confrontational at all). Then there was the waiter who insisted that I was mispronouncing Amstel and wouldn't serve us until I could pronounce it 'correctly' - which annoyed me as its a Dutch lager, not French so I'm not sure his way was right. And worst of all was the scammer up on MontMartre who pulled a knife out on the OH, forcing him to pay them 10 Euros for some tat. Obviously this put a bit of a downer on the trip for him.

So I understood the plight of the Japanese tourists.

Up until the point in the article when it claimed that one of them thought he was Louis XVI.

No matter how let down by a place I may have been, it has never brought on the delusion that I am one of its most famous monarchs.