Wednesday, November 17, 2004
The Lido
The mother of my son's best friend invited us to a charity show at the LIDO today. So I drove from the Jardin to the Lido, a cabaret located on the Champs Elysees. All I can say is that things have changed because I didn't even get worked up thinking about driving around the Arc de Triomphe to get to the Lido. I was hoping to find a picture of traffic around the Arc, but couldn't. I did find a website that states "The traffic is so ridiculous that no vehicle is insured around the Arc de Triomphe." You do feel like you take your life in your hands.
The show was a matinee for children and was about a girl who has a broken doll. The girl has to accomplish five tasks before her doll comes back to her unbroken. It was a fantastic show. Shows in France are called Spectacles and they really are spectacular -- just as you imagine from the movies. Even though this was a kids show, they had women in feathers, a scene out of Star Wars (my son's favorite "task"), an ice skating couple (I couldn't believe the woman was wearing a thong as her outfit!), a magic show, an India scene, and American scene (people dressed in denim), a chase scene through the audience with a dressed up wolf, a clown act and those are just the sequences I remember. There were so many flashing lights and great music that all the kids were just fascinated.
As I said, it was a charity show -- for CARE -- the organization that poor Margaret Hassan worked for. There were 500 underprivileged kids in attendance and they had a great time. There was lot of cheering and applauding when the show was over. I would never have known about this show let alone attended the show without my French friend and I thanked her for inviting me to this event.
-- said Auntie M in Paris
10:36 PM