A weekend in London

We spent the weekend in London with some friends and had a superb time! We drove half way then got a train (as Peter will not yet sit down for the full 3 hour train journey). The shorter train trip was absolutely fine and the boys did very well on the tube too as we travelled on it a lot.

We went on Friday morning and spent Friday afternoon at The National Gallery and walking around Embankment. We all really enjoyed the gallery. We followed a children's trail based on the Katie character by James Mayhew and we had been reading Katie and The British Artists on the way down so we also looked out for some of the paintings featured in there. Harry was amazed by how big some of the paintings were and we thought it would be a very difficult task to sit at a huge canvas and fill it all. The trail was good as it took us around 6 paintings and posed questions to get us thinking about each one. We were there for just over an hour which was the right amount of time for the children at this age.

We met our friends on Saturday and went to The Science Museum. Harry and Peter both enjoyed the hands-on exhibits. Harry used air pressure from dropping a bowling ball to force a tennis ball into the air.

He loved this giant machine with a variety of chutes, pulleys and a bucket wheel excavator all transporting thousands of lentils around! 

Stuart and Peter tested the strength of an arch bridge.

And we made geometric patterns in the pattern pod area.

On Saturday afternoon we had booked tickets for The London Eye so we walked there via Buckingham Palace. We only decided to take Peter at the last minute and he absolutely loved it, I am so pleased we did! He sat on the floor pointing things out and wandered around looking at the viewing map.

Saturday had been a very long day with a late night after going out for pizza with our friends so we relaxed a bit more on Sunday and went on an open top bus tour. We got off at Tower Bridge, one of my favourite London landmarks, and took a boat back to Westminster. There was good commentary on the boat pointing out landmarks and explaining some history.

We finished off our trip with a stop at Hamley's toy shop so Harry and Peter could spend some money given by their grandparents. We liked the huge Lego royal family and guards and we have building and playing with some new Lego and a London jigsaw we bought today.

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Harry was asking in the car when we are going back again and there will definitely be multiple visits in the future. We have had a very relaxed day to recover today as my legs were feeling the effects of all the walking!