Day 1 – Antwerp, Belgium

At around 9:15 a.m. we finally arrived to our hotel, The Astrid Park Plaza in Antwerp. Cousin Binh just dropped us off in front said “see you guys later tonight” and let us venture into the hotel alone. Of course, we arrived too early to check-in and the rooms were not available yet. Then I told them, if they could at least give us one room first, it would be great. They finally said “ok”, but it still won't be available until at least 11 a.m. With 2 hours to kill we headed outside to tour the city and have a small breakfast. As we headed outside, all I could think of was this is a cute little town. We turned right from the exit of the hotel and found Chinatown. Ha-Ha, their Chinatown was made up of about 6 restaurants and 1 little market. We walked through Chinatown and in the middle of it; we saw a place with the name
“GAY RON” outside. We all just started laughing hysterical and that was our first Kodak moment.

Too bad, none of the shops were open yet. We headed back the other way and walked toward the Antwerp Central Train Station (Which is directly across from the hotel) Roaming through the city of Antwerp a little more we finally settled to having breakfast at De la France, which is diagonally across from the hotel. The price for breakfast was about 3-4 Euros per person

We got back to the hotel at exactly 11 a.m. and finally got one of our rooms which was Kevin and Elaine's room, it had 2 single beds. Our room would not be ready until 2 p.m. At the front desk, Anh called Uncle Jerry and Aunt Thao, they were staying at the same hotel. Uncle Jerry had rented a car and offered to give us a ride to the rehearsal dinner that night and told us to meet them in the lobby at exactly 5 p.m. Uncle Jerry is a very punctual person, so we had to make sure we were there on time. We headed to the room it was a pretty contemporary, but the size of the rooms in Hong Kong. For all of you that have traveled with Kevin, you can imagine as soon as the bellman left our room, Kevin's shoes, socks and pants were already off. I have to give him credit; he can remove most of his clothing in a wink of an eye. Elaine immediately jumped into bed, and then Kevin into the other. Anh & I just kinda looked at each other and then he jumped into the twin size bed with Kevin. Can you picture that Anh & Kevin in a twin size bed? LoL! Elaine invited me over to her bed, but I just pulled the two little lounge chairs together and snuggle up. At exactly 2 p.m. I stumble downstairs to check into our room. We had a big king size bed and our room looked a tad bit bigger than Elaine's & Kevin's. Of course we all then took a nap. After a long flight, a 2 hour nap in a bed never felt better.