Carita, the Finnish girl herself (whose articles can also be found on this site), arrived around an hour later – thank God for hotel room BBC – and the gossiping commenced. It was fantastic to see her again; I couldn't believe it had been almost seven months since the last time I saw her, but to me it seemed like no time at all. Let the fun begin!

We headed down to a little Italian restaurant I knew, where we ate too much and drank even more. Aperitifs followed by a carafe of red, a great way to start off the evening, before we headed out armed with the Lonely Planet in search of the Champs Elysees and a good Latin nightclub.

It's a long walk from Rue St. Michel to the Champs Elysees, but alcohol and gossip too interesting to discuss while walking made it even longer. Pit stops were required. Now, if you are ever drunk in Paris around midnight, and are looking for a nice spot to have a bit of a chat, I highly recommend the fountains outside the Louvre. There are always groups of French youngins hanging around, so it feels fairly social, and the setting is magnificent. We stopped to dip our feet in the fountain. It was hot, it was midnight, and we were drunk. We reached the clubs an hour later.

The first club we encountered was rejected straightaway, on the grounds that the entry fee was too dear: a whopping FF100. The second club we tried was obviously much better. The FF100 cover charge seemed much more reasonable the second time around and besides, we got two free drink tickets each. Immediately on entering the dance floor the heat hit us. We are talking about 500 people dancing an energetic salsa in a crowded, unventilated space. The sweat was dripping from the walls. We decided to grab a drink – tequila and lime, perfect under the circumstances, right? Uh, no, not so much. Back home, you order a drink like that, it's the tiniest amount of alcohol, watered down with lime cordial. In Paris, it's a tumbler full of the hot stuff, with the skimpiest wedge of lime chucked in as an afterthought. At first I couldn't drink it, my face spasming with every sip, but once halfway through the glass, I was sucking away merrily.

The majority of the night was spent with Carita, who was painstakingly trying to teach me salsa steps. I followed her for around 30 seconds before unintentionally reverting to my own special style of salsa. All hips, baby. Carita is a serious salsa buff, and it wasn't long before she was whisked away by somebody who could complement her talent more than I.

Unfortunately, that left me alone and looking quite dorky until some nice person took pity on me. The sad thing about this nice person was that he had a glandular problem. He must have done, for the amount of perspiration he was exuding. I had to excuse myself to the bathroom after five minutes, my blouse sticking to my skin where I had been pressed against him.

I was occupied in the stalls when Carita entered the loo about two seconds later. It seemed her dance partner hadn't been much better than mine after all. Her voice was soon joined by a high-pitched squeal, followed by the excited machine gun speech of drunk Finnish girls. Carita had found some friends.

After exchanging phone numbers with the girls from Carita's hometown, we finally staggered out of the club at 3:30 am, and got back to the hotel at 4am (considering we were in a taxi and only 10 minutes drive from the hotel, God knows where the time went). At first we thought that we had been locked out for the night. The front door was locked, and all the lights extinguished, when a young man blearily approached the door, pulling his trousers up en route. It was then that we met the 17-year-old night watchman. After jovially complaining that we had woken him up, we were handed our keys, and tumbled into bed for a night of alcohol-induced sleep.

We did very little the next day, having awoken at one in the afternoon. It was when we arrived at Carita's favourite theme restaurant that things became interesting. She had been talking about it all weekend, an ancient French (think Asterix) all-you-can-eat resto, and more importantly, all-you-can-drink red wine. We intended to take full advantage. Carita had also mentioned a bizarre waiter there by the name of Fabrice, who had taken such good care of her the last time she had visited the restaurant, over a year ago. Guess who would be our server that night? Apparently, even after a year, Fabrice found my friend's Nordic blond beauty hard to forget, and appropriately loaded us up with free aperitifs, and fetched many carafes of wine.

Soon I was socializing with the French family at the next table, while Carita was being dragged off on little adventures by Fabrice. One such adventure was to the private cave downstairs, to view the primitive spectacle of a French bucks night. An event we would later revisit with ambiguous results...

In the meantime a musician had entered the resto. He was an old crusty, with tufts of white-grey hair exploding from all uncovered bits of flesh, garbed in a hat and patchwork waistcoat. He was a great singer. His repertoire included all the popular French folk songs, of which I only knew Champs Elysees. However, the enormous amounts of free wine meant that I was more than happy to join in on all the others as well – and loudly at that. The musician was making the rounds to collect his tips when a representative from the bucks night downstairs knelt by our table.

It turned out that we were 'invited' to join in on the celebrations of the bucks impending marriage to, I must say, a rather unfortunate-looking woman. For his night of honour, his mates had dressed him as a fisherman (read: Louisiana bayou, inbred hick of a fisherman), complete with fishing line on the end of which was suspended the photo of his bride-to-be.

The 'gentlemen' loaded our glasses with wine and demanded that we kiss the groom for good luck – but no tongue. As Carita had already done the honours, I felt obliged to hurriedly do the same, the wine in my bloodstream drowning out my embarrassment. Then, to our confusion, all the guys (excluding the groom) stood up on their chairs and turned their backs to us. Carita and I looked at each other. Then a chant started up "Tous ensemble... tous ensemble..." ("All together...all together...")... and then they all pulled their pants down! We were astonished! Brown-eyed by 30 men. They then turned around with a malicious glint in their eyes... "Tous ensemble"... and they were looking straight at us.

It was time to leave.

We sat unsteadily back down at our place, took one look at the full carafe of wine standing on our table, and decided to donate it to the lads on our right. By this time, the party downstairs had come to its end and the boys were filtering past. The saying of goodnight to a passing acquaintance in France dictates the kissing of both cheeks, even if you've just met them for five minutes in a restaurant; sometimes, apparently, you even exchange addresses. According to Carita, this is about the time that we both started singing. I have no recollection of this, so have decided to believe that she is mistaken on this point. Ahhh, the conveniences of memory loss.

After exchanging the socially required 60 kisses, Carita and I looked around the restaurant to discover that we were the only ones left. We had spent six hours there. When Fabrice and his friend came to kick us out, they suggested a rendezvous after they had finished cleaning up. We exchanged numbers and agreed to meet at the Australian Bar after an hour, then stumbled off in search of a cab. We had no success. Not a taxi in sight. So we asked a group of 16-year-olds directions to the bar, figuring that it couldn't be far.

Two boys detached themselves from the group to offer to drive us there. We accepted (okay, very silly to be taking rides from strangers – bad, bad, bad). They shepherded their disgruntled-looking girlfriends into another car and we were off. The boys tried to pique our interest by playing dreadfully impressive music, i.e, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I'm sorry, but "Let's do the time warp again" hasn't done it for me since I was wearing roller skates in sixth grade. After at least 20 minutes of driving around in circles, we instructed the boys to let us out at the Jardins de Luxembourg, the date with the waiters completely forgotten. We clambered up to the hotel, undressed, opened the windows to escape the heat, and collapsed into bed.

The next morning we awoke to six missed calls on Carita's mobile, as well as a windowfull of neighbours, clambering to see us, the semi-naked girls. We felt a bit guilty for leaving the waiters stranded the previous night, but soon shrugged it off. Though apparently the boys didn't feel the same. They called again later that day wanting to see us... What heartbreakers!

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