Day 21: Goodbye Anja, Hello Mom!

Today was Anja’s last day of road-tripping. Not that I wanted her to go home, but she apparently couldn’t take any more time off. In all honesty, there’s no real way both she and Mom would fit in the car with all my crap…

We wandered around downtown Austin for a bit, had a delicious egg/tortilla/black bean/salsa breakfast, shopped for souvenirs, and mailed about 100 postcards at the post office. In downtown Austin, by the way, there is a mailbox painted up like R2 D2. Presumably to go with the USPS’ Star Wars stamps. Whatever, it’s cute!

We had ice cream for lunch at Amy’s Ice Cream. I love vacation.

Then Anja tried desperately to pack all of her things into her backpack for the trip home. She brought out 6 books that she had intended to leave with me, and thought she’d go back with a light backpack; instead, she had a huuuuuge plastic bag filled with carry-on souvenirs, and actually ended up leaving some of her toiletries with me. Heh. Who can resist Elvis and folk art?

I drove Anja out to the airport, came back and tidied up the hotel room a bit, napped a bit, ate some dinner, then drove back out to the airport to pick up my mom. When I went out the second time, I swear I followed the same route I took the first time, to the point of pulling into the parking garage, but I turned left and parked in the third row instead of turning right and parking in the second row. Yet, somehow, when I dropped Anja off we were on the first level of the parking garage, and when I picked up Mom I was parked on the second level of the parking garage.

I can’t even begin to explain how this happened. I thought I was going crazy for a second. Does the Austin airport short-term parking garage have a day set-up and a night set-up?