GO WEST !

"Go West" is a 4-day-tourism show taking place at a different place very year, with around 800 attendants: suppliers representing destinations, properties and attractions from the American West and international tour operators (and a hand full of media) participating. It started yesterday with a choice of either lectures and speeches or a city tour of Boise/Idaho, the attractive metropolitan center of the "Potato State" Idaho.


The opening event in the evening took place in Boise's beautifully renovated Idaho State Museum (pics below and on left), with a performance of Basque dancers (the city has a long basque heritage, with a community of about 16,000 - one of the largest in the U.S.!) and pow wow dancers and an unique all-female drum group of the local Coeur d'Alene tribe. There was Basque food, Basque wine and local beer being served, too.



Today we had our first full day of appointments, which gets pretty tiring after a while. There are a 155 tables set up (each of us had one) and "suppliers" are running around to meet with "buyers" (and the few media people). It's a lot of talking and being attentive. Some of the appointments are interesting and productive, some are not so much. But, you never know before,,,

Some contacts we choose ourselves, some were chosen by the suppliers. In between lunch was being served (pic below), coming along with speeches and presentations, sponsored by Best Western: pork tenderloin with hash browns and veggies and not bad at all, considering the number of meals they had to serve at the same time. We met a lot of people today and my head is spinning now (it's late afternoon). Fortunately, no event tonight, just a quiet beer with a good friend of us in a nearby brewery.