Even though I have 11 weeks for my summer holiday I haven’t had a lot of time to relax because of the training camp. But now that the training camp is over I’m finally free and I’m gonna take off….without my racket.
I’m going to Europe for a few weeks and the original reason I’m going was because of badminton. I was going to play badminton in the Gay Games in Paris. (It’s open to anyone to play, you don’t have to be gay.) It sounded super fun, it’s like the Gay Olympics with thousands of participants (600 in badminton) but my gay friends backed out and I felt it was maybe too weird to play by myself. But I love traveling by myself, so I’m not backing out of my Paris trip.
I’ve been to Paris before, a few times, so I don’t need to spend time doing all the tourist stuff. Instead I plan to be a “writers tourist.” I want to eat in the bistro’s Hemingway mentions in A Moveable Feast, and visit the homes and parks where famous writers, painters and artists once dwelled. Since I don’t have the Gay Games I have some extra time so I’ll head over to London for a few days as well to continue the writers theme (I’ll sit in the pubs that Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used to haunt).
This is my first holiday in more than two years where I didn’t bring my badminton racket with me to travel, and while I’m sad about it, I can bring MUCH smaller luggage and won’t have to worry about my racket breaking on the flight. It feels truly like I’m stepping away from it all for a few weeks.
So things will be quiet here for the rest of August but I’ll be back with tales to tell and pictures to share!
See ya later, badminton-gator!
