Today we wake up in Luxembourg and whilst I'm getting the sandwiches ready the kids spot a park so of course they have to have 5 mins play time. The bus comes every 15 mins so it's not long to wait and then it's about 20 mins to reach the centre.

The first thing we spot is our first Christmas tree of the season and it's a biggie. We walk through the main square and the kids recall where we are from last year. This time however they have a morning market selling fresh foods, weirdly all the kids want is a dry bread roll (guess I have their school to thank for that since it's one of the daily snacks they can buy), Al goes for a pretzel since he's not had one yet.

Our first experience of the day is a visit to the UNESCO world heritage Casemates du bock, a subterranean defence system made up of kilometres of tunnels. They date to 1644, with more tunnels added in the 1700s by the Austrians. They go as deep as 40 meters but only the main passage is open to the public. The tunnel system had 25 cannon slots for defense of which we got to see a few. There were many dead ends we kept going down and there's no suggested route once you're down there so you sort of just have to hope for the best. We got some lovely views across the river and it was nice to visit somewhere new.

It's definitely colder today but we still manage to have our lunch on a bench then we give the kids the option of visiting the chocolate house where we went last year either now or after the modern art museum.

The kids weren't too full (or so they said) so we took the short walk over to the shop. When you get there the downstairs is a regular shop selling things to take out or you can choose one of the many hot chocolate spoons then take a seat where they will give you a glass of hot milk a homemade marshmallow and a pot of cream. Last time we were here I remember the kids definitely overdid things and felt really sick. I said it would be better if they didn't order cake but they wouldn't listen and they really liked the look of the red velvet cake. Al chose the black forest gateau and we took a table upstairs. They were still serving outside but we decided it would be cosier indoors this time. Al and the kids also chose the XXL chocolate spoons, what could possibly go wrong.

The kids managed a single bite of their cake each before they had flashbacks of what had happened last year. As good as the cake looks it is insanely sugary, match that with an also sweet drink and it's a recipe for disaster.

I think Liliya only managed one bite whereas Robert did try and power through as he didn't want to prove that once again 'mother knows best'.

They didn't even get the sugar high, they skipped that and went straight to feeling sick. I even managed to get an almost identical picture of Robert outside the shop not feeling great.

Last year

This year

Whilst waiting for the bus we had just a few minutes to pop into a beautiful church to light candles.

Using the free public transport we head over to the modern art museum (whilst the kids try and get over their sickness).

There are several different exhibits once again needing the accompanying brochure to truly understand the messages the artists wanted to get across.

Our first exhibit was titled Songs for gay dogs from German artist, Cosima von Bonin. It is a series of scenes involving familiar animation characters, comic strips or has an under the sea theme. The kids recognised the Daffy Duck prints and really liked the pigs in handcuffs.

Next was a series of female artists that merged computing and art. As a techie at heart there were some really interesting pieces or just flash backs to times like when I used to have to use a dot matrix printer! There were a few video pieces that the kids enjoyed watching along with some glitchy sounding audio exhibits.

From the rest of the exhibits one we spent a fair while looking at was a poster of the world overlaid with social contagions and phantom phenomena. There were some really interesting facts from various countries including one from my home town in Halifax.

On the walk back to the bus we enjoyed a cheeky leaf throwing fight then caught the bus all the way back to the moho. We needed a few supplies for our final day tomorrow which took a little longer than anticipated as who doesn't enjoy browsing a foreign supermarket. At this point however we knew by the time we had driven over to our final stop in Belgium it would be too late so once we'd crossed the border we stopped at the McDonalds. Robert tried his first ever fillet au fish which he thinks is amazing 😂.