What we are looking forward to can be exemplified as either as a noun phrase or as a verb-phrase with an -ing pattern There are ... of instances where such verbs end with the preposition to ...

It is really a matter of learning which verbs take 'to-infinitive' clauses and which take an '-ing' clause, Claudia. After some verbs, e.g. 'tell', 'advise', 'ask', 'to-infinitive' follows the ...