Kate's Crazy 21st

There is still one more leftover post from our whirlwind of visitors at the beginning of June that I wanted to write:  recounting the events of Kate's 21st birthday celebration.

Kate and Anna were among our visitors in early June (Kate for two weeks, Anna for one), and their visit coincided with Kate's birthday.  The 21st birthday is a milestone in the US, of course, due to the drinking age, but much less so in France.  The official drinking age is 18 here, with the observed drinking age often even younger.  (There is a generation of French people still alive who can recall being served wine or beer for lunch in their primary school cafeterias.  All children could have it until 1956, at which time it became only available to those 14 or older.  It was not until 1981 that they banned serving alcohol in secondary schools in France.)  So it was a bit ironic that Kate would spend her 21st in Paris with us.  But, still, we were thrilled to have her.

Months before, when Taylor Swift's European Tour tickets originally went on sale, Kate was able to purchase four tickets to a show in Lyon that would occur a couple of days before her birthday.  So all four of us made plans to go, including train tickets, lunch reservations, and an overnight stay in Lyon.  And I ordered a special t-shirt for her to wear at the concert that said "It's supposed to be fun, turning 21," a famous line from one of Taylor Swift's songs.

We also wanted to do something special on her actual birthday, so I booked dinner at a very nice restaurant in Reims in the heart of the Champagne region.  (Kate likes champagne.)  I figured we would be able to take one of the local trains out there on the morning of her birthday, go to a champage house or two for tours and tastings, have a festive celebratory dinner, and then grab the train back to Paris.  We kept this part a secret from Kate. 

The first part of our plan to celebrate went off without a hitch.  We arrived in Lyon in time for a lovely lunch before heading out to the concert at a venue outside of town.  (You can tell from this photo I took that my seat was quite far away from the stage.  Glenn's was, too, but Kate and Anna were down on the main floor.  Glenn and I had gone to a Taylor Swift concert a few weeks earlier in Paris, and had tickets on the main floor to that one.)

We arrived back in Paris the next day a little exhausted but invigorated for stage two of our plan.  But I still needed to sort out the logistics of getting to Reims and back.

Well, it turns out that it is easy to access one little corner of the Champagne region using the local trains from Paris, but one must take the TGV instead to get to Reims, where our dinner reservations were.  And the TGV would cost 75 euros round trip per person (compared with the local trains being free on our Navigo passes), and there was no train back to Paris late enough to allow for dinner in Reims.  And the one champage house we most wanted to take Kate to was closed for renovations.

Ok, we needed a plan B.  I cancelled the dinner reservations and, with Glenn, chose a town outside of Paris that 1) we could access using our Navigo passes, 2) had hiking trails through the woods nearby, and 3) had a lovely restaurant where we could have an elegant lunch, and maybe even share a bottle of champagne. 

It was too late at that point to make a reservation at a fancy restaurant for dinner, and we'd be having a nice lunch anyhow, so I booked a table at a pizza place nearby for when we arrived back in Paris that evening.  

The comedy of errors continued.  We missed our intended train and needed to wait in the station for an hour for the next one.  The restaurant we had picked for lunch had a fermeture exceptionelle---exceptional closure---and there were no other sit-down options in town, so we grabbed sandwiches and ate in a park.  We also missed our intended train back.  

The dinner at Pizza Chic was delicious (although the service was quite slow), and we at least ordered a bottle of wine to share and toast Kate's 21st birthday.  And here she is with Sandy hiking earlier in the day.

Sharing the day with Kate and Anna was lovely, even if it did not proceed exactly as Glenn and I had planned.  Kate, ever the good sport, reported that she had a fantastic birthday.