At the end of September, we signed up with some good friends of ours to attend an international convention. We had been toying with the idea of taking an international trip anyways in 2015, so why not make it a convention?
Two days later, we submitted forms with our preferences.
On October 29th, we found out we were accepted to go to Belgium in July!! Belgium! Our first choice.
It was a very exciting day. :)
I went out and bought a travel book right away.
And of course, we had a very odd celebratory dinner Wednesday night including Belgian waffles, Belgian beer, and Belgian chocolate. Because I'm cheesy like that. I discovered I am not a fan of Rampant IPA. Especially with waffles. And chocolate.
My head is still spinning from everything I have to get done before then and all of the planning we need to do. I did a lot of the planning for our Paris trip in 2009, so it's not totally new territory for me. I am by no means an expert, but I actually kind of like doing it and I do know SOME stuff. The first thing I started on was our hotel reservations. We are required to stay in either Ghent or Antwerp for 7 nights, so I researched the four least-expensive hotel options on our list in Ghent (the convention city). We emailed back and forth as a group, selected one, and I emailed the reservation request form to Belgium this afternoon. Hopefully they will get back to us soon with a go or no-go. This particular hotel is a 5 minute walk to the convention center. Once we get confirmation, we will be able to take a step back and breathe a little. That’s a major hurdle right there and will switch us into the ‘confirmed’ delegates status instead of ‘selected’ delegates.
After that will be flights, communicating with the Belgium branch office, and planning our side trip(s). The side trip(s) and flights will have to go hand-in-hand because we may be flying into one city and flying out of another.
It's very easy to get overwhelmed. But...one step at a time. Once we hear back on our hotel, we will move onto the next step.
So for now, I'll leave you with some photos of beautiful Ghent (all from Pinterest):
C'est très jolie, oui?
