Lowrey Visit

Sorry this is a bit late - Parents visited May 3rd to May 8th.

Keith was right, I was down right giddy for my parents visit. It's not like it's been that long since I've seen them so it's hard to explain why I was so giddy. I am not really homesick at all, I guess I was just so excited to show them where we live, what our place is like, what are some of our favorite places to eat. I was also overwhelmed reflecting on the idea that my parents were living in Europe 30 years ago, when I was born, and now 30 years later they are here visiting me living in Europe. Just cool. They arrived at a small airport about 30 min from our place Saturday evening on May 3rd. They had been on a two week trip to Spain with a group from their church and decided to tack on a trip at the end to see us.

Their visit was really great, it didn't rain once while they were here and every day it was about 75. The first night we took them into Mons, which was really alive and upbeat, we ate at our favorite place Steak on a Rock (I don't know the real name) and then had dessert and coffee at a cute little cafe. On Sunday the whole family, yup Bailey too, headed for the Netherlands. We headed to a place a friend of the family had told us about, the Keukenhof gardens. The gardens are only open three months of the year, March, April and May and they say that the flowers are only in peek bloom for a couple of weeks. Well we clearly made it there for the peek. The gardens grounds were enormous, and the flowers were amazing. I've never seen so many types, varities, and colors of flowers, some of them were as high and my waist! The whole place was a photographers dream. It was great to have Bailey with us, she did really well, very little pulling and seemed comfortable with the crowds. What's really great about Europe in general is just everyone's acceptance of dogs. We sat for a coffee and were giving Bailey some water out of make shift dish when one of the staff came out of nowhere with a dog bowl filled with water just for Bailey. Our neighboring table was playing with her, and then the staff returned with some treats for her. Just hard to imagine any place like this at home allowing dogs, let alone going out of their way to make her comfortable.

Keith took Monday off work to spend some more time with my parents but to also pick up our new car. See the car blog for more details on that adventure. So once we had the car we (minus Bailey) piled in and headed for Brugge. Overall a very easy going sight seeing day, lunch, a canal cruise, and window shopping. We did discover a shop that sells every Belgian beer and it's corresponding glass, so Keith was in heaven! I am sure we'll be making some return trips there.

Tuesday Keith headed back to work, and the rest of us used the day to relax, do some much needed grocery shopping and most importantly nap! That evening we showed them the base and went back into Mons to show them the church and other landmarks. But overall just a nice day around the house. Wednesday the three of us headed down to the local train station and took a ride into Brussels. After unknowingly wandering in the right direction we made it to a museum that had a painting "The fall of Icarus" that my dad wanted to see. Although the specific artwork there really didn't do much for me, I really enjoyed seeing several art students sitting and painting throughout the museum. They seemed to be copying or focusing on certain aspects of the paintings, doing a portrait of a secondary figure. We also headed into the Grand Place for lunch and a chocolate waffle. We called it a day and took the train home.

After a great deal of reflection on our parts we all agreed we wouldn't change a thing about their visit. We got a lot of sightseeing in but also found time for relaxing. With everything ending on a high note, I took my parents back to the airport of Thursday morning, and of course their flight back to Madrid was delayed. Because they had flown as part of a group they had to fly out of the same airport in order to keep the group rate so unfortunately they couldn't fly directly out of Brussels but had to return to Madrid. Long story short they missed their flight out of Madrid and had to stay for two additional days in Spain. So although our visit was fantastic, their trip home was a bit of bummer.