LexTraveler

The next day, we started off with a business session, and then it was off to Oversea Restauran, a Chinese restaurant recommended by our host. Me, my dad and our host had all seen the menu for the restaurant and approved it, but whether we missed something, or the restaurant just decided to do their own thing, I’m not sure…what I do know is that we had about 10 courses for lunch. Everything was delicious (I had a special non-seafood menu – that would be a theme throughout the conference), but by the end of the meal, we were all stuffed. And running almost an hour behind schedule. We agreed to cut out one of the afternoon activities, but I was unwilling to push the dinner back – it was already set for 8pm, and we ... read more

We finally arrived at Gatwick, and zipped over to Durrants Hotel on George Street. It is a lovely old London hotel, with a lot of character…but less than good service. The hotel still uses what look to be original keys, which you turn into them every time you leave the hotel. We freshened up and headed out into the afternoon to do a bit of shopping and have a bite of dinner – the next two days would be very full with meetings, so it was really the only free time we had. I picked up some doggy mugs at a great kitchen shop along the Marylebone High Street, which match the dog mug I got there last year (now I’ll have four!), and picked up the matching forks and knives for the two spoons I ... read more

Here I am again, typing a recap of my trip while on a plane. It just seems to work better to spend my time getting a bit more sleep during the conference, and running the risk of forgetting something for the sake of more rest! We left midday Tuesday, with a less than pleasant flight via Continental/United. Fortunately, we had a direct flight right into Orange County, and were renting a car, so once we had our bags, it was an easy drive over to the hotel, which was about five minutes away. Our home for the next few days would be the Island Hotel, just across the street from our hosts’ offices. Although the hotel wasn’t right on the water, and it was undergoing construction just next door for the duration, it was a really ... read more

Friday morning dawned EARLY. Despite being back in my room at a very reasonable time, I have trouble settling my brain when I’m out with a group of people until late at night. So I puttered around for a while, uploaded the photos I had taken of the group and posted them to various places, and played a computer game. I was well and truly exhausted, and finally fell asleep, but it felt like my alarm went off far too early the next morning. We had a very productive morning session, with my favorite part being the “speed-dating.” Since we have a networking group, we like to encourage different ways for them to get to know each other. So we set up the room like a speed dating session, and had the delegates sit in pairs ... read more

The next day, we were back at Heathrow again, this time, headed to Copenhagen. The flight wasn’t too long (fortunately, because the seats were SMALL!) and we were soon at the airport. The airport is quite beautiful, with these dark wood floors – how often do you see that at an airport? We got all of our luggage and found a taxi. And that’s when the trouble started. It turned out that there was a huge championship bike race holding their time trials in the center of Copenhagen (why, I don’t know). They’d blocked off most of the center of town…you know, where our hotel was. And with four big bags (hey, we had a lot of conference material!), there was no way we could walk a long distance to the hotel. So we drove. And ... read more