Well today is the day it all comes to an end, unlike regular 2 week holidays though I'm not feeling sad about returning, nor am I in any rush though. This last week where the weather has been more bearable and less activities per day planned has resulted in better behaviour and sleep from the kids.

I made sure we had a final fun activity though which was the zoo and given its a Sunday it couldn't have been a town visit given everything shuts. I had forgot about this yesterday and slightly panicked as I planned to do a hypermarket shop this morning prior to the zoo. Thankfully the rules have relaxed slightly and I found one that opened until lunchtime so I could still purchase all the things I never knew I needed.

We had a picnic lunch then headed into the zoo. Before coming I had made sure to read up about the welfare of the animals, I would like to think rules have changed from around 15 years ago but the worse zoo I ever went to was in France where they had lions locked away in small cages and I think they even still performed circus acts.

The kids can be a bit blaze when it comes to zoos given we have an annual pass for our local one and they really just like visiting for the park areas but this had plenty of different animals for them to see. Interestingly though when I asked them what their favourite animals were Robert's was the lemurs, and Liliya chose the serval (aka leopard cat), both of which we have at our local zoo.

We were there for a good three hours and were lucky enough to see all the animals except the lions.

The kids thought the hippo yawning and going to sleep under water was hilarious and we all enjoyed watching the elephants play with each other.

If there is a park anywhere nearby the kids will of course spot it so the one outside the zoo had to be visited and we had a while before our evening crossing so they spent a bit of time burning up some remaining energy.

We then decided to head to the terminal early to try and blag an earlier crossing which we did by an hour which gave us enough time to feed the kids the sushi they had picked from the hypermarket and me to get even more from the duty free because I can't resist a deal.

On the train we got the kids ready for bed in the hope they'd fall asleep on the drive home. Despite Liliya sleeping in the van at all the moments we didn't want her to during the trip of course the pair of them decide to be the best of friends and chat all the way back, which as cute as it might be I would rather they slept as I know they won't have a lie in tomorrow.

I'm planning a final blog entry in the next day or two to summarise the trip. Then the planning begins for the first motorhome trip in October, currently wondering if a road trip to Legoland in Denmark would be a good one, if you've enjoyed following our travels let me know and I'll let you know when the next entry is ready 😜