After a full hot breakfast at the hotel (Don't you just love how European hotels offer breakfast — as opposed to having to hunt down the nearest Denny's?), we made our way to the show halls once again. Today, however, we retraced our steps from the first couple of days (when we were in "gotta-see-it-all-now mode") and made sure we actually spoke with some of the key players in the industry.

Our first hours at the show, however, included a mad dash around the show floor, hoping to photograph some of the most interesting exhibits before the halls filled with people. As members of the press, we were allowed onto the show floor at 9 a.m., an hour before the halls officially opened. That mad dash, however, came to a screeching halt at 10:15, as hordes of people swarmed the halls (and unfortunately, made their way into our camera shots).

Our first stops included a host of U.S. exhibit- and event-industry firms with booths at EuroShop. Some of the company names you'd probably recognize are 3D Exhibits, AGAM Group Ltd., CEP International, Exponents, Fabric Images Inc., Group Delphi, Skyline Exhibits, Southwest Displays & Events, Nomadic, and Transformit. Granted, some of these firms actually shared booth space with international partners, but they all had a presence somewhere on the show floor. (For a complete list of U.S. firms at the show, visit
our EuroShop FAQ.)

We also made a stop at Designers Village. Instead of individual exhibits, various design firms were each assigned a vertical column of sorts, which they could then decorate or design any way they chose. The village was an interesting take on traditional exhibits that offered tall, easily visible branding elements and yet used the vertical space in the exhibit as prime real estate.