The bucket list is well and truly underway, from Sunday to Wednesday last week I went with my parents to Luxembourg.  Luxembourg is one of Europe’s smallest countries and is known primarily for corporate tax avoidance, with many of the worlds largest corporations situated there not for its central location. Having been to now 27 European countries here’s my trip advisor style review of the country. 

It’s capital is a lovely city built on hills two of which are sites of old forts. It’s a very fortified city with old battlements everywhere. The hills also create an upper and lower city, the lower part, built in the valley, has a village feel albeit with plenty of bridges above it. The modern part with the European Commission  mixes well with the old fort its build above. 

It’s a good place to walk around, it’s wealth comes with nice cafes and good restaurants albeit at a slightly elevated price. What it lacks is a certain edgy feel, it’s almost too pristine. It reminds me mostly of Gothenburg (Sweden) where it’s own perfection is its downfall but well worth a visit if you’re going past and would be a lovely place to visit. Order the local dishes at your own risk, I went for the bed of dumplings with pork on top. This was a base of tasteless soggy dumplings with pork scratchings on top. 

This leads me nicely in talking about a city which has it all, Budapest. I’m adding in this because it’s my favourite European city. Narrowly beating Barcelona, Prague and Tallinn. What it has is a self confidence that Prague doesn’t have. By this I am talking about the contrast between the British Olympic ceremony and the Chinese where both were great spectacles in their own right,but the British had its own character so what if we used an Eastenders reference. I digress but Budapest and the feeling it’s been cool for years and hasn’t been imported like Prague. The bars and clubs are attended primarily by Hungarians as opposed to Prague they seemed to have been built primarily to get tourists in. No where is this more apparent than Riga (capital of Latvia) which is becoming a stag location where clubs are full of strippers and foreigners have to pay more. You don’t get any of this rubbish in Budapest. 

Next stop Malta.