London during the summer holidays

We had been promising LP we’d take him to London for ages and before the summer holidays began we took a conscious step and booked a hotel stay for mid August. LP was so excited when he found out we’d actually be going to London that he kept asking us how many days it was.


By the time the trip came around LP was beside himself and listed all the things he wanted to see.


Tower Bridge
Tower of London
Buckingham Palace
One of those guards that stand still 
National History Museum
National Science Museum
Big Ben
London Eye
SeaLife Centre 
Shrek’s Adventure





Family means no one gets left behind or forgotten. 

David Ogden Stiers





I’m sure there were others on his list too but I can’t remember what they were. 

The most important ones, according to LP, were Tower Bridge, the London Eye, and Big Ben. I have no idea why he was so desperate to see them but he really was. I think it could have something to do with hearing about them at school. 




The London Eye


We got up early on 24th August, got in the car and drove down to Edgware then got the tube into London from there. From the tube we walked straight to the London Eye. We remembered the last time we visited (2012) the London Eye the wait times were immense and we wanted to be there before the crowds. 






This time there were no crowds and thanks to our Merlin Annual Passes we were able to skip the regular queue and get straight onto the London Eye - that was pretty awesome. We’d boarded our pod within about 5 minutes of arriving at the queuing area.



I loved seeing the reflection of the London Eye in the Thames.


As the pod went around I remembered the times we’d been before, once in 2011 when LP was still in a pushchair! It was a lot busier then and LP didn’t enjoy it as much - he was quite restless. This time LP looked out of the windows and asked questions about the buildings he could see. I showed him the tablets inside the pod where he could check what he was looking at and find out about it. He was impressed with that and spent a good 10 minutes looking at it. 



LP was very impressed with being on The London Eye and loved looking around.


I spent a lot of my time snapping photos (as every good blogger does!) and tried to get as many of my boys as I could. The Hubby even helped with a few so that I could be in them!






We all loved our trip on the London Eye and I’d definitely recommend it for great views of London. 




SeaLife Centre


After leaving the London Eye we used our Merlin passes again and went into the Sea Life Centre. I loved this, it’s always so peaceful in there - even with little kids running around screaming “look! I see Nemo!” - I especially like the jellyfish area.








Shrek's Adventure


Shrek’s Adventure is right by the Sea Life Centre so we booked our slot for that and had to wait for 45 minutes. Instead of hanging around we took a walk across Westminster Bridge - towards Big Ben - and sat on a bench the other side of the river. That’s when I realised that the building I was looking at - the one right by the London Eye - was where Britmums Live was going to be held. I knew where to go now!





Our time for Shrek’s Adventure rolled around and we headed back across the bridge. To be honest we weren’t that impressed with Shrek’s Adventure because we did more queuing that actually seeing anything. Our boys are probably a little too old for it too and that might have contributed to our opinion. We queued for a good 45 minutes after our allotted time and the thought occurred to us “why have an allotted time if you have to queue anyway?”. We left Shrek’s Adventure disappointed and won’t be going back but I think this is more to do with the boys not being interested than anything else.




Exploring London


After our disappointment we walked around London some more and on our way we passed the This Morning. It made me giggle because, while I don’t watch it now I used to. We also passed The Globe Theatre which was interesting, I remember hearing people talk about it and never knew where it was - now I do.








For the rest of the day we did lots of walking and took about a million photos. We ended up very tired and thankfully we’d already booked dinner at Barbecoa. By the time it was dinner time I was certainly ready for a good meal and a really long sit down.





To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there. 

Barbara Bush





As we spent 2.5 days in London I decided to split this post into two so in the next instalment you’ll find out what we did on day 2 and 3 of our trip.


Have you ever taken your children to London? What did you enjoy most?

And if you haven’t visited London before what would you most look forward to seeing if you got the chance?

You can see more photos from our trip on my Facebook Page and feel free to comment or send me a message over there. If you’d like to chat you can connect with me on Twitter - link. And if you’d like to see videos of some of our days out recently you can check them out on my YouTube Channel  (you’ll also see a couple of vlogs on there too!).