It's a surprise!

A surprise birthday party... but not for the birthday girl ... it was she who was to surprise her guests. What a brilliant idea?! All we knew, is that we had to be on time, Swiss timing, not Italian. We were summoned to a charming little Italian restaurant at the foot of the Eiffel Tower at 8 o'clock sharp to enjoy a sumptuous meal where the local Southern Italian dishes just kept streaming out of the kitchen and onto our table.

Needless to say I had gotten the dress code all wrong. After having miss-interpreted the last Italian party as a bell-bottom, platform shoes and big hair do - just because the invitation had said disco music - I decided to tone down my attire even though the dress code mentioned glitter and colour and went with a purple ensemble and black high-healed platforms. I was the ONLY one NOT wearing sparkly sequins and glitter...darn! And I looooooove sequins and glitter!

After dinner we headed towards the Eiffel tower still without a clue what our birthday girl had next in store for us. Were we to ogle a cabaret show or climb the Eiffel tower at night?

Lo and behold underneath the Eiffel Tower was a Disco bus with dazzling pink interior waiting for us. A DISCO BUS. How cool is that? Ever since we arrived in Paris 2 1/2 years ago and I saw one of those buses pass by below our apartment on the first Saturday night after we had moved in, I wanted to board a swaying, obscured windows, slow-moving, driving music box. Tonight was my chance thanks to the amazing invitation by my Roman friend.

We stepped into a vivid, gleaming, luminous, radiant, luminescent bus with padded seat benches along both sides. Little compartments holding champagne glasses were niched in the armrests. The DJ was well-prepared and between 80's disco beat and Italian canzoni kept us boogying while we drove through the city of lights. Little did we take in of the outside world - thus is the luxury of actually living in this city - so we could have fun together dancing and taking pictures.

However, the best picture will stay in our hearts and not in our camera thanks to the exceptional surprise that none of us guests will ever forget. I now seriously need to plan for my next big birthday party...

Pit stop at Place Vendôme for the birthday cake