A gift from Riga, Latvia

We made our Christmas trip into Brussels today. First stop was The Grand Place to see the manger and the Christmas tree. This year the tree is a gift to Brussels from Riga with several unique symbols used to decorate the tree. Legend has it that over 500 years ago residents of Riga came together to jointly decorate a tree. This is why Riga is considered to be the place where the tradition of decorating Christmas trees was born.

From here we went to the Bourse to see the Land of the Giants expo which had robotic dinosaurs and mammals. I was worried it would be a bit scary but actually it was fine and the kids were very enthusiastic but concerned to learn which animals are now in danger of extinction.

From the Bourse we made our way to Place de la Monnaie where the outdoor ice rink has been moved to this year. We had arranged to meet Olivia's two best friends and their families for some ice skating fun! We were all given proper ice skates, even Dex, and they took a bit of getting used to! Olivia managed to get hold of a skating penguin to help Dex (she can be so kind and thoughtful at times as we hadn't asked her to get one). After a few wobbly laps we started to gain a bit more confidence. However the problem was that the ice was covered in a layer of water as the external temp was very warm and the ice seemed to be melting slightly. It made conditions very slippy as there were no grooves in the ice to get any grip and combined with the wind there were a lot of wet bottoms from falling!
Afterwards we all went to a lovely cosy restaurant decorated to the max with Christmas lights and bows, to enjoy hot chocolate and waffles.
It was lovely spending time with Olivia's friends, their siblings and parents as usually it's just a quick chat in the playground, so today was really enjoyable.