Day 2: Monday, 9 May 2011

We got to Brussels around 8:50 AM. My first view of Brussels was a good one. I snapped a few photos promptly. It seems to be a fairly clean city, and the Conrad Hotel is right in the heart of the upscale shopping district, Avenue Louise. We were able to check-in immediately with Aat (a Vantage representative) and headed directly to our room. There was a bit of a hiccup at first. They had me and my Dad rooming together, which just wasn’t gonna work, and so we had some serious room switching to do!  

I figured out the converter and adapters to plug things in without issue, and I charged up a camera battery without incident before lunch. Later that afternoon, Aunt Peggy tried to heat up her flat iron. A few minutes later I smelled a funny smell, and then a minute later there was a pop noise, and smoke started coming out of her adapter/converter. I pulled it out of the wall quickly, but it continued to smoke. I was really glad that we had the windows open because it smoked for several minutes after that.

At 4 PM, we met the rest of the Brussels group for a vicinity walk. Aat took us around a few of the blocks closest to our hotel to give us a lay of the land, so to speak. We had some time to kill before our welcome briefing and dinner, and so we took more pictures and explored the hotel. Mom and Dad have an awesome balcony view, and so I took pictures of Mom and Dad posing from their balcony from the awesome courtyard below.

At 6 PM, we had our welcome briefing followed by dinner at the Wiltshire Restaurant in the hotel. We met some interesting people at our table. We headed up to our room soon after dinner and headed straight to bed. Exhaustion is real!!

Favorite Thing or Funny Moment

• Aunt Peggy: multiple calls and trips down to the concierge and hotel reception desk
• Mom: meeting interesting people at dinner, taking the walking tour, intrigued that everything is so close with the tiny narrow busy streets, likes the cafes in the alleys
• Dad: tiny, crowded streets
• Me: meeting George and Marilyn, room-switching drama
• FEELING: Exhausted but excited at what the rest of the trip holds for us!