London

Been a while since I posted - never seem to have a minute and the enthusiasm at the same time!

Anyway, for Steve's birthday we decided to book a trip to London (with the kids) to go to the Science Museum and see the sights.  Neither of the kids have been before so it seemed like a good idea.

We caught the train from Retford direct to Kings Cross on Friday afternoon. All went well until the outskirts of London where we were delayed for 45 minutes due to a 'knocking' - they couldn't find anything wrong so eventually just carried on!  Not quite sure how to feel about that, at least the train held together until we arrived.

We stayed at the Park Plaza County Hall, just the opposite side of the river to the Houses of Parliament.  It wasn't a bad room at all as it had two rooms and a mini kitchen along with a great view of Waterloo station (in the photo it is the building with the crane in front of it and blue windows)!


Can highly recommend it as it was great for kids - they were given treat vouchers to spend on ice-creams, sweets and drinks.  They also let us extend our check-out time till 2pm with no extra charge.  I also think it's fab that we paid £7 per night in advance for breakfast for all of us when it costs £13.99 each if paying later!

On Friday night Auntie Jane visited us as she had been in London 'on business'.  We went to Ned's Noodles for some nosh and had a short wander with two tired kids (though to give them credit they weren't grumpy!).

Despite not dropping off till after nine, our two home-grown alarm clocks were still up at their usual time of 5:58am to ensure we were ready for breakfast when it started at 6:30!!!

After breakfast we negotiated the tube and headed to Buckingham Palace to wave at the queen - she didn't appear to wave back so we took a long, slow walk from there to the Science Museum, stopping for a quick coffee on the way.  I think both kids were ready for a nap before we arrived at opening time, 10am.

They did perk up somewhat with all the interactive displays but I think that despite a whole host of interesting displays, much of it is made interesting by the information provided with it.  We found it rather hard to keep the kids in one place long enough to pass on the info!  Of more interest to them was the trip to Hamleys where they happily spent their spending money (with some gentle persuasion away from the horrible yappy mechanical pink puppy!).  We then had a bit of lunch before heading back to the hotel to put our feet up for a few minutes.

In the afternoon we went on the London Eye, something that I've wanted to do for years but last time I was in London (2001) the queues were too long.  I loved it but it was rather wasted on the kids as they preferred to look at the info on the computer screens rather than out of the window.  Beth was also rather disappointed that it went so slow; I think she had visions of it being like a big wheel at the fairground!!

After that we had a wander over to Trafalgar Square where the kids had fun climbing on the lions.  I felt like a country hick for most of the weekend as everywhere was so busy.  You would think that the beginning of March would be a pretty quiet time to go but no, it was packed everywhere and quite overwhelming.  Beth didn't seem to mind and has put in a request to move to London, she didn't seem particularly put off by the issues of not having a house, jobs or school to go to!

Today (Sunday) we went to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs and have a poke around.  There were some impressive sights, not least the dino bones.  The kids enjoyed it but didn't seem overly amazed by things - I'm not sure if they properly realised that things were 'real' or if they, at the ages of three and five, have just seen everything and there's nothing left to astound them!!  Hopefully it's the former or they are going to have rather dull lives.

To finish off the trip we met up with one of Steve's housemates from uni, along with his partner and their five-month-old son.  We met them in Kensington Park at the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Playground.  It was a great playarea but we didn't stay long as it was bunged.  Instead we had a walk down to the lake and watched the remote control boats before a quick stop at the hotel for bags and back on the train home.

A very enjoyable weekend away, definitely one we'll be repeating in a year or two once we've recovered!