an excursion to london

on friday, i had booked the day off work thinking that we would be doing a ww2 evacuation day, but it was cancelled. we decided to make the most of it though, and do an overnighter to london! we had a number of possibilities and a definite. the definite was tower of london, as we have a palaces pass currently, and possibles thrown open included the globe theatre, tate modern, museum of london, imperial war museum, something found on a leaflet… and bookshops! bookshops were picked out as the girls each have a lot of book tokens to spend!

so we started at the tower, we were a bit worried, as the day started off v bleakly rainy at our end, but london just dismal rather than overtly wet – so v happy!! SB picked up a ‘thing to do’ so off to the treasury [has it always been called the jewel house?] to do the sheet. SB loves doing sheets, and this one has a sense of humour. we looked for the frog for ages before sb read on and said it was a joke !! BB lost patience before SB had finished, so some dividing and conquering, but think the sheets are good, mostly info and v little writing! SOme serious lagging later and we went to the restaurant for lunch – that set us back a bob or 2! the weather was too cold and wet to picnic out in any kind of fashion unless truly masochistic – and although chris and i alone may have been, the addition of BB warrants gentler treatment! [SB is pretty much game!] After that we went into the Henry VIII armour exhibition and hands on area – which was really good and SB spent a long time looking, and even BB made a fairly impressive coverage. The annoyance for me was the no photography rule. grr! finally, we went for a walk along the ramparts, and really liked all the info and background noises placed along them. i did wonder if there was a leaflet for that actually. We were chased out by warders for it being closing time. so we did only do that one thing!!

mooched back to the travelodge, with BB falling asleep on the tube, a rest, re-invigoration and out for a meal at a nearbye italian where they made a fuss over the girls being lovely – and they were. the travelodge is directly over the circle line, and initially BB insisted on looking out of the window at every rumble, but the game eventually palled…

next day up and to brekkie, when surprised by BB shouting there is k-! and there she was!! on breakfast TV, so we cheered her on defending her educational choices. SB had chosen the globe theatre, and by a slightly devious route we got there. loads of the tube was closed, either whole lines or stations, so we had to do some extra thinking! we decided to get to st pauls and then walk across the millenium bridge. we checked on a map our bearings, and BB made other tourists laugh by saying she now knew where the toilets were – she knows the important signs! [aside - though not the letter p however hard we try, she insists it is an r or a t - although she can recognise those]. we meandered around st pauls garden, had a look at the fireman memorial and ambled our way to the globe, just in time, as it started absolutely chucking it down.

we loved the globe! we started with a look around the top information exhibition. thought it was nicely done, could be read at a number of levels – pics for bb, skim read for sb, bit more for chris and i had we had the chance! then a break in the middle of more display items and then on how built. we then had a 40 min guided tour of the globe, and although abslutely teeming it with rain, the guide was excellent, and so were our children. so much so, that i bought them home ed books in shop at end [well, they are still on a no museum money as spent 4 museums as one at hampton court - currently £1 a museum, but with poss of slight extra if needed, so usually better saved up!] I chose 2, and agreed to SB’s choice off 2 as well. [what a moment of weakness!]
SB’s choices:

my choices [a bb and an sb book]:

[I will not look at cheaper-by-far prices on amazon!!]

and we read them whilst having lunch there, which was good, as SB’s had a printing error, and it was easy enough to exchange! we went back and did the musical uppersection and then the ground floor of the exhibition, discussing printing presses with a demonstrator – SB is fairly happy with discussing printing presses, she has seen quite a few in action as well as having it on the inventors story cd! then we popped next door to the tate modern – the printer recommending the black box, so we went in it. not quite dark enough as lots of ppl held their mobiles out to see [headdesk!!] and then we peaked at a couple of the galleries SB and i had a chat about what she could see, what she liked, if she thought there was an emotion there, and how might the art have been created, but BB becoming tired, so we had a restorative cake before moving to a bookshop.

i am going to gloss over finding the bookshop, suffice it to say that chris and i had different ideas of where to go, i agreed to choose chris’s idea, and we both regretted it, and the girls did a fair bit of extra walking before we ended up at the known fabulous waterstones by picadilly… SB chose nearly all famous 5 books [£40 worth!] and BB was dissuaded from buying all dr who story books – mainly because she can’t read, they have no pics and she doesn’t want them read to her, just turns pages, so we found a variety of doctor who alternatives, and she then picked 2 fairy based books she was also happy with. we had passed a buffet chinese on shaftesbury avenue earlier, so made steps back there, stuffed our faces, staggered back – well, we were going to get a bus at girls request, but by the time had walked to leicester square, decided to tube it! BB sang a v cute and jolly looking for a bus song, complete with looking actions. just made the train, easy journey home and there you go, a lovely 2 days in london!