London Calling – part two

Did you enjoy your icecream? 😉 Well, the curtain is about to go up and we’re on to the Second Act of our London trip…

The kids had heard all about Hamley’s Toy Shop in Regent Street from a schoolfriend. We went there on Saturday afternoon and, incredibly, it wasn’t too busy. I have to say I was slightly disappointed as I thought it was going to be more ‘fairy tale’ like, more like F.A.O. Schwarz in New York). It’s not a cosy place. Just a huge shop on 5 or 6 floors with stark lighting and decor. And shelves and shelves of toys.

The kids, as you can imagine, were impressed nonetheless 😉 DD7 stopped after the first floor and declared she already knew what she would like to buy (a Hello Kitty Build-a-Bear) and didn’t need to look any further. Manage to persuade her to take a peek at the other floors and of course, she changed her mind several times from a painting set, to magic pens to cuddly dogs…not all of them pocket-size.

She finally decided (very wisely, I must add) on a special sticker set. And DS10 got some Club Penguin cards which he had been reading about on the net (they haven’t made it over to Denmark just yet).

To our surprise the weather in London was mild – no snow to be seen – so it was nice to be able to walk around without hats, scarves and gloves as we’ve been doing back in Copenhagen for the past three months. But it rained quite a lot on Monday morning so we decided to ditch visiting the Tower of London and head indoors to the Natural History Museum. This was a real eye-opener and, in contrast to Hamleys Toy Shop, I wasn’t disappointed but highly impressed. We entered from Cromwell Street and came into a very modern part of the museum, complete with shining crystal globes.

And a huge escalator which took you up into the skies and on a journey to the centre of the earth – or so it seemed for our two little visitors 🙂

We started off by looking at volcanos, earthquakes, solar system, birds etc and ended up in the museum’s current ‘star attraction’ – the Dinosaur exhibition, complete with a lifesize moving T-Rex.

The old part of the museum building looks exactly like the set from the film “Night at the Museum”. But this dinosaur sadly doesn’t chase bones… And unfortunately for Mum, there is no ‘Larry’ on duty 😉

Older kids and adults will enjoy the Cocoon part of the museum. Here you can see ‘real’ researchers at work and there are plenty of interactive activities – what and how to pack for a field trip etc. And staff on hand to explain the equipment used when collecting specimens etc.

Had a great sandwich and caffelatte at the Deli Café (there are several places to eat) and the shops had a good range of gifts. Though I had to laugh when I saw that they were selling ‘make your own volcano’ kits. We made our own one for free a couple of weeks ago – see my Crafty Tuesday post – She’s gonna blow! But the shop did have some really nice jewellry so I splashed out (£4, circa $8) on a couple of gemstone rings! 😉

Which reminds me that I need to go reapply my nailvarnish before I can wear them and post a pic…time to get moving.

Normal service will be resumed on the blog tomorrow, which means Menu Planning as it’s Thursday. Have a wonderful Wednesday! 🙂