Well it was Friday night!

But I would have to say this was a bit classier than Michael’s usual “Two and Twenty” ( two beers and $20 in the pockies at the local bowling club at Golden Beach.)

We got ourselves dressed up in a good gear (Michael wore long trousers and a sports coat and looked very dapper) and headed back to the Metro, regardless of the trauma earlier in the day. ( I may have fibbed in my last post about us’ moving on’!).

When we emerged from the station we were right beneath the Arc de Triomphe and hundreds of people were out on the town. Reportedly this Avenue is one of the world’s most famous streets and the most expensive strips in real estate.

Only a few shorts steps from the Arc was our restaurant – Chez Clement.

We were booked in for a three course meal.

Michael ordered us a bottle of red wine which was served very chilled. It was delicious. He had the snails and I had the duck pâté, followed by steak tartare for him and more duck for me. (Our next door neighbours need to understand the great expense and trouble we have gone to to research our next luncheon menu. Michael is now busily searching the internet for suppliers of snails in the Caloundra area.)

Our sugar free diet went out the window for the night as we had to try the desserts. Michael commented that my Crėme brûlée was better than theirs. I didn’t believe him.

While we were enjoying our meal a very friendly Frenchman sitting next to us struck up a conversation with us, thank goodness in English. He told us he was an actor and that his name was Jean-Claude ( I immediately wondered if he was going to say van Damme) as that would really impress our boys, particularly Joe, but no, his surname was Caron.

He is apparently quite famous for his role in Navarro, but sadly for him, neither Michael nor I knew this. He was charming though and genuinely disappointed for us that Michael had been robbed (Yes, Michael had not let it go at this stage).

After fond farewells we headed further down the Champs- Élysées to find the Lido where we were booked into the 9pm show. The outside of this building was much classier than the Moulin Rouge, however inside was very similar. We were seated upstairs and served a glass of champagne and waited in anticipation for the show. It was spectacular and although I have “borrowed” all the photos in this post from the internet, we certainly saw all of this. The scantily clad and absolutely gorgeous women were there in the dozens and the music and choreography were perfect. The specialist performers were not as good as those we saw at the Moulin Rouge however. And the fact that both Michael and the other man at the table with us tried valiantly not to fall asleep ( as we were well past our usual bedtime, although I don’t know the other fellow’s excuse) should not reflect anything about the women in the show. They were gorgeous, but just not enough on this occasion.

We made our way back onto an even busier Avenue and headed for the Metro confident we could retrace our steps to get ourselves home.

We were wrong!

We followed signs to the railway and not the Metro. Were we the only ones who did not realise they could actually be in the same location? I guess so.

We may have had to crawl underneath the ticket barricade to get out of the railway and explain ourselves to yet another French ticketman that we had just gone the wrong way and would he let us through to catch our metro train without buying another ticket… And he did!

Safely home we could hardly wait to get to bed and the phone rang. A very helpful fellow wanting to talk with Michael about one of his stolen, and now cancelled, credit cards. Needless to say, while we appreciated their prompt response, midnight was not a good time for us, so he will call us tomorrow. I did not have the heart to tell him we would be on a bus tour sipping champagne and may not be in phone contact. But we will find out I guess.