Hello out there and welcome to another episode of the Findlater travels.
This week instead of just being the adventures of Kyran and Mercedes Findlater we had a little tag-a-long Hector Findlater (Son of Hamish, Kyran's half-brother).
Kyran and I were on Baby sitting duties, so this blog will be a little more of in and around London but from a Family/Child-accompanied point of view.
This week I have learned that London is not all that Child friendly when it comes to mothers with prams. We were lucky that there was two of us, because I feel that we had to pick the pram up and carry it at literally every train/ subway station that we visited and half of the museums.
From this respect I think that if you are planning to visit London with a stroller/ or wheel chair there needs to be a lot of prior planning and the trips and expect the trips to take you longer.
The Natural History Museum:
Little Hector is crazy about dinosaurs so in an attempt to blow his little mind we took him to the Natural History Museum. I know that there has been previous blogs about this museum but lets revisit from Hectors point of view.
First thing we saw was the Giraffe and its skeleton and then the mammoth, and then with so much to see we ran around the entire museum saying "look" and "wow".
The following are a few pictures that I took along the way.
However when we got to the water dinosaurs he was looking a bit confused, I think a lot of children's stories focus on the land dinosaurs and not so much on the water one. In any case I think he was as equally impressed to see any dinosaur of any kind.
We eventually got to the actual dinosaur display/ exhibition. As you walk in you can see dinosaur skeletons above you then as you turn the corner and walk down the corridor the light starts to dim. Eventually it gets pretty dark and you can hear growling.
As you turn the corner you are faced with an animatronic T-Rex! It growls and moves its head and tail around. In front of it is a half eaten smaller dinosaur.
All in all it is well put together and for the older kids it is fantastic. For little Hector it was terrifying and he went running out of that room soon after he saw it.
The rest of the display was bones/skeletons and animations, Hector enjoyed the rest of the exhibit but later when we asked him if he wanted to go see the dinosaurs one last time he said "yes" up until we got to the entrance and he realized that he would have to pass the T-Rex and instead said "I'm tired, I want to go home".
The Science Museum:
(www.sciencemuseum.org.uk)
Since this was right next door to the Natural History museum and we had heard that there was a thing for smaller children we headed over to see what it was.
For those of you who are not familiar with this museum you enter and walk through towards the back of the building through various displays (Engines, cars, trains,rockets etc.).
The section with the space rockets and moon landing stuff was themed, so dimly lit room, rockets on the roof. Poor Hector thought that he was going to meet the T-Rex again and kept running out of the room (I didn't realize this at the time). So needless to say there was no interest in space stuff (initially) from little Hector.
Below are some photos of Hector and Uncle Kyran wandering around together.
On the Sunday we decided to go to the British Museum (www.britishmuseum.org), again we had to carry the pram everywhere.
The first story I have to tell you is about Hector and his shoes. I am sure this has happened to many a parent many a time, but here is what happened to us:
We were all getting ready to leave the house and I said " Hector go get your socks and get Uncle Kyran to help you put them on".
Hector did just that and then got in the pram, we all got ready and left the house running to try to get the train.
We missed the train only to be sitting at the station looking at Hector..." Hector where are your shoes?" So in the end it was a good thing that we missed our train or Hector wouldn't have been able to run around all day. Kyran was sent home to get him some shoes and the day was saved!
As with all kids they have good days and bad days, so we didn't get to spend much time in the British museum in the end. We did however manage to take a quick selfie and then took Hector outside to run around.
Hopefully in the future we will do a more comprehensive blog on the British Museum.
After we got walking Hector fell asleep so we set off looking for somewhere to eat. We were unhappy to find out that our favorite "Vegan Hippo" place was closed for renovations. So we had to keep looking.
We ended up walking through China town and beyond. Here are two of the photos that we took along the way.
The final food destination was a place called Firezza. (www.firezza.com/restaurant/dean-street), We were drawn in by the writing on the window offering Vegan Cheese on pizzas. The pizza was huge, very tasty, the pricing was reasonable (for London) and Kyran later got accused of eating ALL the pizza from Hector.
After a late lunch we decided to do a park crawl and wear Hector out before taking him home. I taught Hector how to play in the Autumn leaves and make piles to kick and jump in. We did that at the park and then headed home.
The photo below is of Hectors new dinosaur hat that I made him, and he ran around the house "rawr"-ing like a dinosaur.
In the end we had a good weekend with little Nephew Hector.
I know that this blog hasn't been one of our more adventurous ones but I though I could do a bit about our adventures with little Hector.
One last thing to add is this Vegan cake we found around the corner from Hector's House. he cake shop/cafe was called "Le Grand Jour" and you can find it on Google maps here.
It was super tasty and super sweet, I couldn't eat the whole thing but Kyran stepped in to save the day and ate both his piece and half of mine! It had a VERY difficult (but tasty) layer of hard toffee or caramel style substance in the middle of it, making it quite a mission to eat it. But it was a good and successful mission!
Until next time, I will leave you with this quote:
The final food destination was a place called Firezza. (www.firezza.com/restaurant/dean-street), We were drawn in by the writing on the window offering Vegan Cheese on pizzas. The pizza was huge, very tasty, the pricing was reasonable (for London) and Kyran later got accused of eating ALL the pizza from Hector.
After a late lunch we decided to do a park crawl and wear Hector out before taking him home. I taught Hector how to play in the Autumn leaves and make piles to kick and jump in. We did that at the park and then headed home.
The photo below is of Hectors new dinosaur hat that I made him, and he ran around the house "rawr"-ing like a dinosaur.
In the end we had a good weekend with little Nephew Hector.
I know that this blog hasn't been one of our more adventurous ones but I though I could do a bit about our adventures with little Hector.
One last thing to add is this Vegan cake we found around the corner from Hector's House. he cake shop/cafe was called "Le Grand Jour" and you can find it on Google maps here.
It was super tasty and super sweet, I couldn't eat the whole thing but Kyran stepped in to save the day and ate both his piece and half of mine! It had a VERY difficult (but tasty) layer of hard toffee or caramel style substance in the middle of it, making it quite a mission to eat it. But it was a good and successful mission!
Once again thanks for reading our blog, as always if you want to contribute to keep the blog full of adventures I have set up a Paypal account that you can donate to.
Also if there is anything that is around where we are and you want us to see it/review it please do let us know! we would love to hear from you. Send us an email at:
findlatertravels at hotmail.com
Until next time, I will leave you with this quote:
There's something so great about being with your nephew and, when you're tired, just handing him off back to your sister.
- Tahj Mowry
No comments:
Post a Comment