More Travels With Tiny Persons

Luxembourg and Margate may not be among the 100 Places You Must Visit Before You Die, not unless you've got the rare Tax Havens and Depressed Towns On The Perpetual Cusp Of Regeneration edition. However, we've got mates in both and we thought we'd save Machu Picchu until Kit's memory is a little more developed (and he can maybe pay his way, if not ours).

So 'The Bourg', as nobody calls it, afforded Kit his first flight and foreign destination. Travelling from London City Airport was so hassle-free I'm going to make all my future travel choices based on whether you can get there from City.

Having said that, I did suffer the most intimate security frisking I'd ever experienced. If it had been a lady frisker, I would have joined the queue again and maybe brought flowers. It wasn't. It was the other thing. I'm sure he got a bit of 'nad on the way down, during which, out of habit, I closed my eyes.

The city of Luxembourg is ancient, pretty and twice the size of the actual country – which is about the width of the A4. Luxembourg boasts, if that's the right word, the earliest average bedtime in Europe – 9pm. As Spud and I still reside in the realm of the sleep-deprived, this actually sounded attractive. I also liked the frisson of rebellion you might experience if you stayed up for the second half of a Champions League game.

The country is also run by a kindly Grand Wizard who holds a massive party in the city for his birthday and gives everyone the day off, as they're not used to staying up late. Much loved by the Luxembourgers, they pour out of their little houses in the national costume of jeans, trainers and polo shirts, drink themselves Belgian and tuck each other in at nearly 10 o'clock. Madness.

Dizzy with excitement at being away, we stayed up far too late with our hosts and drank way too much on the night we arrived. That left us in a fug of diminished capability that would disable us for the rest of the trip.

Also, sleeping in the same room as Kit means you need a holiday when you get home. And you're not going to get it. You're going to go to Margate.

Tiny, landlocked and bordered by Belgium, France and Germany, it's no surprise its history and culture is entwined with its neighbours and their passing dynasties. It eventually asserted its independence however when the Dutch William III relinquished his claim to the region with the phrase: "Here, you can have that bit."

I was still surprised when someone tried to use Kit's slightly Germanic Barnet to make him look like Adolf "Chuckles" Hitler and lead the country to the Sudetenland.

They're not much into conquering, though, bless them. Indeed, the motto of Luxembourg is "Mir wëlle bleiwe wat mir sinn", which means, "We want to remain what we are," though it is often mistranslated as "No thanks, we already have double glazing."

I was lucky enough to experience Jarre, not the tedious French composer, thank Christ, but a hearty Luxembourgish dish, at the Mousel Cantine. It's basically a knuckle of pork, slow-roasted on a spit for 24 hours that comes at you like roast ham, entirely encased in crackling. So delicious, most of it still resides in my small intestine.

Thanks to our fine hosts and their friends we had right old good time in Luxembourg and returned to London exhausted and full of slowly digesting meat. Next stop on the world tour: Margate.