Alright, first post in the epic parents’ visit saga of blogging travelinesses! I briefly recounted the arrival of the parents last Sunday, but a little more needs to be said, and shown!
We caught a ride out to the airport with Mona, one of Mary Jo’s students. The Linz airport is a ways out of town and actually kind of hard to get to. It’s also not much to look at!
We arrived plenty early and waited at the exit gate. As it would happen, another of the TAs showed up to pick up his sister and her boyfriend for a little time in Austria as well! Soon enough the parents’ plane landed. it only took about 15 minutes for them to get off, grab their luggage, and pop out of the exit door.
We loaded them up in the car to get into Linz. They were in really good shape for just completing a trans-Atlantic flight!
Mona was nice enough to drive us up to that big church on the top of the hill (Pöstlingberg). We showed them around up there, then Mona drove us to their hotel. She had to run, so we said goodbye and got the parents all checked in. Once we had got their stuff up to their room, we walked into the old part of the city and had supper as this nice little place called Römerbrunnen. It was a nice end for the day.
The next morning (Monday – what we’re calling day 1), was started with the parents hitting the breakfast at the hotel. There was considerable confusion on that point, but it turns out that their breakfast was not included with the room price, or was at least optional with the room price. Anyway, the breakfast at the hotel was 16 Euro per person. Oy! At least it was tasty!
After breakfast, we wandered into the main part of Linz and started checking out all the churches. We kind of tried to work from least impressive to most impressive. We still had fun along the way though.
Mixed in with the church visitations, we also stopped at any interesting stores… including the awesome toy stores they have here! I noticed something kind of neat I wanted to share: little (perhaps functional) word working machines, including a drill press:
and a table saw:
We worked our way through the churches, had some lunch at Pizza Verona, then decided to see if the castle/fort museum was open. It was not, but we walked around the grounds and admired the view. We even got a chance to take that picture we were planning way back when.
Kepler’s a jerk, but he backed down once Joni got serious.
We spent a little more time just sitting around the park admiring the wonderful weather and the great view.
We returned to the dorm and made some turkey chunks with peas and potatoes. We spent the evening playing some cards and just chatting. It was a good way to end the day.
[…] Day 01 – Linz […]