Christmas Market in a Cave: Sounds cool, right?

Spoiler Alert!  Major Disappointment!

This is actually an old church converted into a restaurant called "The Church."  Ummm, something is very wrong here.

Thanksgiving was uneventful as we had a close friend over and then another family that we are very close to as well.  It was low key and not too stressful.  Brian smoked a turkey and fried one too.  I stayed home from Mass since I was needing a little more rest and chance to make the last dish that the kids did not do.  The next day we left for a trip.  We met up with different friends in Holland for these famous cave Christmas markets.

Although I had heard one friend say she didn't like them and it was more like a mall than a Christmas market, we thought it was worth a try.  Turned out to cost around 60 Euros just to get in.  We had been waiting to eat and it was 1:30 or 2pm before we actually walked into the cave and the oldest children and the adults were starving.  (I had fed the little people some PB&J's in the van.)  There was a food stand outside of the cave and I thought that was weird.  Why have food outside the cave Christmas market?  After all, what else is there to these markets if not for the food and drinks?

Turns out this market was not all about the food, but all about the shopping instead, and it had only two food stalls at the very end of the cave.  We were famished, we almost didn't care that the only food choices were pre-made waffles or mediocre hot dogs.  

One might think, "Well, at least there was Christmas shopping!"  But one should be warned that said "shopping" was for mostly dollar store and Made for TV quality items.  There were a couple genuine gift stalls along the way, but still nothing like the real Christmas markets.  On top of all that, they tried to charge for something else every time you'd turn around, for bathroom breaks, selfies, etc.

Some of the walls were decorated, painted, etc which was pretty.

After a very long day of walking through two caves, we decided to try out the local above ground Christmas market that didn't cost money just to be in to find some food for dinner.

Ran into Santa while we were there.

After looking around a bit, we all went to our hotel rooms for the night.  The next morning, we headed back home and saw a rainbow on our way.  That was our 2nd Christmas market of the season.