London With Children

Perhaps not a location in the traditional sense, riding the Tube is still quite fun and a novelty for the children. Our some city also has a metro system, but it's not as iconic or all encompassing as the Tube is. Plus Child A got to try and match all the locations they could remember from their London monopoly board with the places on the map.

Double-decker buses are also a bit different as the children are used to bendy busses, and even for the shortest ride the children always rushed up the narrow swaying staircase to see if the front seats were free. You do get a nice view from up their, but it's always a rush to get the children down in time to get out and the right stop.

This was the only sight either child had explicitly mentioned they wanted to see. I don't know why, compared to all the other much more famous locations such as Big Ben¹, they specifically thought of the eye. I guess we must have told them about it, or perhaps they saw it on a photo somewhere.

Today was super clear, with some fluffy clouds, the view from the Eye was great. Since it was built there are other, free, viewing platforms that offer great view in the City of London (like in the Walkie-Talkie building), but you have to admit that the Eye's location opposite Whitehall is super. You get to see Parliament, St James's Park, Buckingham Palace and a close view of the river. The price was somewhat eye-watering² (London is horribly expensive), and it only last half an hour, but the kids were impressed by the size of the wheel, and that it's suspended over the water.

Having seen Buckingham Palace from The Eye, and attempted to point out Nelson's Column, we persuaded the children that's where we wanted to go next, and re-charging with some katsu curry for lunch, we headed for Trafalgar Square, which isn't that interesting.

It's a stone square with some statues and a massive grey column. It's also covered by tank traps/car stoppers, metal entrance gates that look like metal detectors and loads of signs telling you not to do anything and that you're being watched all the time by the ominous 'Greater London Authority' (obey the Authority!). One busker, in a area marked specifically for buskers, probably with a permit, booked weeks in advanced and stamped in triplicate, was joyfully singing and dancing along to a soundtrack, but was, even in the sunshine, fighting a loosing battle against the high security atmosphere.

From Trafalgar Square we started down The Mall for Buckingham Palace, but because of building works couldn't go directly through Admiralty Arch, and had to squeeze down a side road, where we got to see a very London scene of a tourist bus and 4x4 having crashed into a souvenir stand (no one was hurt).

The Sultan of Oman had recently been on a state visit to the UK, and now a cherry picker and transit van were making their way slowly together down one side of the Mall, pulling them down and putting them away³.

We were lucky with our timing, and without planning it, arrived only a few minutes before the Captain's Inspection, which is at 3pm on the days where there's no changing of the guards ceremony. A small squad of ceremonially dressed guards in bright red jackets and tall bearskin hats march out in front of the Palace, and then are ceremoniously inspected by a Captain (whom you can identify by more gold on his uniform, and a fancy plum in his hat). As he goes down each row there's some shuffling of feet to make sure all the guardsmen are in neat rows and columns. (There was so much shuffling, that I suspect they work on stopping more out of line than usual so it looks like the captain has something to do.) Child B was very impressed by the soldiers and their uniforms.

The Captain's show was stolen by the Irish Guard's band, which came out at the start of the inspection and plays the entire time. To everyone's joyful surprise they started by playing Toto's Africa, and while they did seem to play a few more expected 'military' tunes, we got a Bon Jovi medley, some Earth Wind and Fire, and they ended on Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter (as identified by Child A).

We didn't visit any of these in detail, just wandered back, through St James' park stopping at one of the nice little playgrounds. Then carried on towards Whitehall, and enjoyed seeing the Pelicans in the lake along the way. The children, and us, were starting to get tired, so this was very much a "look there's a famous building" and keep moving activity. We also knew this wouldn't be very interesting for them, so we bribed ourselves with ice cream once we got back to the station. But at least they can say they've seen these famous places.

We walked down King Charles Street, saw Whitehall and the Cenotaph, and stopped at the end of Downing Street. There wasn't much to see but some bored looking policemen with large machine guns, and us trying to persuade Child A that this was probably not the best time to try and climb a fence out of boredom. We then went past the Palace of Westminster, managing to snap a family selfie between tour busses, and ended by walking over Westminster Bridge.

In addition to the (free) museum entry, we also booked the Wonderlab, which is a hands on/interactive exhibition for children that also has little lectures and displays. (Much like We The Curious in Bristol, which the children loved in the summer) That was good fun, we got to see a Tesla Coil, plus someone using liquid nitrogen to freeze and shrink a balloon animal.

The rest of the museum was also interesting to look at (apart from the medical part, which Child A and I found creepy). I also felt personally attacked by them having a Nintendo 64 console in a display case. I think the curators are doing this on purpose to troll their millennial audience.

I went to the Science Museum a few times when I was young as my grandparents lived in London. What surprises me is how much of I recognised again, but I can understand why. If you have a large hall on the development of steam engines, and a number of working engines; these aren't going to be replaced. No one is making newer types of steam engine, you don't need to update your display. Same for the aerospace gallery at the top floor. I remember seeing most of the large items in this gallery with my grandparents: The cut through section of a 747, or the Harrier jet and other historic aircraft hanging from the ceiling.

Wait, this doesn't sound very London specific - well no it's not, but we don't live in the UK, so going to be able to see a children's film, in English, is a bit of a novelty. It was also a wet day today, so we went to see Coyote vs. ACME at the Odeon on Tottenham Court Road. The film was funny, and Road Runner surprisingly touching. The cinema entrance was also weirdly through a coffee shop.

Entry is free, but the contents isn't. The world famous toy shop is spread over six floors, which on a wet Saturday is packed with children, and shop staff demonstrating various toys to entice the children. It is pretty overwhelming for both for adults and children.

Before we went we made clear to both children that they'd received some spending money from us, and from their grandmother, which set a hard limit on what they could spend. But both didn't spend all of it, being probably overwhelmed by the choices. Child A went for a small Lego red London double-decker bus set, which seems appropriate. A had wanted a Transformer originally, but Hamley's transformer selection was very disappointing. While there was a shelf of the toys, there were only two different, and very expensive transforming toys. The rest of the shelf seemed to consist of models of Transformers, which makes no sense to me. If it can't transform, is it even a Transformer?

As our lunch had been popcorn, we were hungry mid-afternoon for something savoury and bit more substantial, even if not a full meal. So as we sought shelter from the pouring rain, we nipped into Kingly Court, which has a fine selection of restaurants. The children agreed to try some sushi, which suited our needs, and so we did that. The good news is they were quite happy to share a portion of sushi rolls, and seemed to enjoy it. The bad news is that sushi is a very expesive way of feeding a family of four. (Forboding noises.)

As the next day was dry and sunny, if cold and incredibly windy, we decided to do some more outdoor sight seeing. We started with Tower Bridge; you can just look at and walk over, but we paid for the entry, and compared to the entry fees of most other things, the family ticket was pretty good value for money.

Inside you could walk up and down the two towers, and walk across the two walkways at the top, and get nice views up and down the Thames. There were lots of interesting displays showing how the bridge had been built, and operated. The walkways also had sections with glass floors in them, so you could look down on unsuspecting traffic below and pretend you're a pigeon.

Included in the tickets was a visit to the old engine rooms, which are under road just south of the bridge. These include some very well preserved static steam engines, that are being moved slowly, and a good explanation of how the lifting system used to work.

From Tower Bridge we walked past the Tower of London and, with only a little rush, just caught a Thames Clipper ferry down to Greenwich. The Thames Clippers operate a fleet of pretty fancy looking high speed aluminium catamarans. This costs a bit more than taking any other TfL service (and children aren't free), but it's a nice way of seeing the river, and in some sections the boats are impressively fast. Heading East we got a nice view of Canary Wharf growing in the distance.

Getting off the ferry pier the first thing you see are the mast of the Cutty Sark, in its museum. We didn't go there, but instead went looking for some lunch; which the children insisted should be sushi (our poor wallets). We found a place, which was nice, and had a sign outside saying "families and well behaved dogs welcome". We've now told our children that a pre-condition to taking them to any restaurants in the future is that they're at least as well behaved as a 'well behaved dog'.

After lunch we carried on to Greenwich park, walking up to the view, the observatory and the meridian. Frustratingly the nicely marked meridian in the courtyard of the Royal Observatory is only accessible with a ticket. We didn't feel the rest of the museum was worth it, so instead we had a little walk around the park, enjoyed the view over to the towers of Canary Wharf and then spent a bit of time hunting the meridian on our phones. (The brass line in the courtyard is no longer the actual meridian, which instead is the IERS Reference Meridian, and is therefore slightly away from the observatory.) On a clear day like today, the view over the park, the Old Royal Naval College and to the modern glass office towers of Canary Wharf is quite a sight.

As we headed back down the hill to Greenwich we stopped at the National Maritime Museum to use their surprisingly good playground (we didn't go into the museum itself).

The last 'sight' to see was the old Greenwich Foot Tunnel, from 1902, that connects Greenwich to the Isle of Dogs. It's quite a small tunnel, which has lots of signs telling you no cycling, and lot of rental bikes parked at the ends near the inoperable lifts.

The children enjoyed running down the echoy tunnel at the start, but then grumbled that it was quite a long walk with not much to see, which isn't totally wrong, given there are no windows in then tunnel.

At Island Gardens we got onto the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), which is a driverless train system started in the late 80's and expanded since. The most exiting feature is that there's no driver, and like on smaller automated metros you might have experienced in places like airports, you can sit at the front and look out. We got lucky and the children could do just that as we rode it all the way to the end of the line at Bank station.

It meant we also got to ride through the modern office buildings of Canary Wharf, which through the quite dirty windows of the DLR, had a certain Blade Runner vibe of grubby future to them. The children really enjoyed the ride, especially the final twisting turning drop down into Bank.

Our last day was a bit wet, so time for an indoor activity. As we weren't sure about what we were going to do as the weather was uncertain, we didn't pre-book an entry time to the museum, and being the first day of half-term, we had to wait in the drizzle outside for an hour. While not a great start, queuing in light rain seems like an authentically British experience for the children. I'm also now very good at eye-spying around the Natural History Museum's facade.

Inside was packed with families, as well as other animals. The dinosaur gallery was, of course, the main draw, and pretty good. One slightly odd choice is the hang a lot of the (replica) skeletons from the roof above the visitors. I assume it's to get more stuff into the gallery, but you loose a lot of the sense of the size of them, hanging up above your heads.

We spent a surprisingly long time in the Mammals Hall, which was really well put together. I have to admit though that I missed seeing Dippy, the Diplodocus skeleton, in the entrance hall of the museum, the cast having been removed, after 112 years, in 2017. (There is a bronze version of the cast in the gardens, called Fern.)

After spending the afternoon in the museum we went to meet my mother in law near Liverpool Street Station, and at dinner together in a food court. The children choose sushi.