A trip to London.

On Monday we had an early start to get to Leicester to catch a coach at 9 o'clock for a day trip to London, organised by the lovely I.  We set off in what should have been plenty time at 7.45am, but traffic and roadworks in Leicester and a mile that took 20 minutes, meant that we unfortunately delayed the start a bit. 

The coach dropped us off at the Natural History Museum at just gone 11.30am and was due to leave from the same place at 6pm.  Some people went elsewhere for some or all of the time, but others, like us were happy to spend the whole day at the NHM. 

K, M and I started off with the dinosaurs along with E, L & J.  The first time we visited the NHM, when K was 5 or 6 at the time and M was about 4, K was so terrified of the moving model raptors that I had to take her elsewhere, while M and A continued to see the model T-Rex.  This time K decided that one of the raptors was called Geoffrey and named the others too (the T-Rex is apparently called Bob).  We enjoyed looking at the dinosaurs as we worked our way along the walkway.

Two juvenile hypsilophodon

An iguanodon

A gallimimus.

At the end of the walkway, we arrived at the home of a dinosaur that M has long considered a friend of hers.

 

Bob!

The section after Bob, focuses less on individual dinosaurs and more on things like habitat, hunting, how dinosaurs moved for example and has more interactive things to do with all of the children enjoyed.

We then met back up with other friends and after we'd had our packed lunch in the basement picnic area, E took L & J to the Science Museum and we spent most of the rest of the day with C and S and her dad and granny.  First we went in search of the museum's latest acquisition, the most complete skeleton found to date of a stegosaurus.

No need to name this dinosaur, as she's already been called Sophie!

We then headed up into the red zone of the museum.  It varied how much time we spent looking at the various exhibits, but the earthquake and volcanoes section caught the girls' interest and they particularly liked the earthquake simulation.  K and I then looked at the different types of earthquakes and also where the biggest ones are most likely to occur, since there had been one with the epicentre not very far away recently that was strong enough to be felt (although none of us did).

Map showing the tectonic plates and the direction they are moving.

K was particularly keen to see the 'pretty, shiny, sparkly things' (said with tongue in cheek I think!).  She is particularly keen on opals, which are her birthstone.

Stone with opal in.

Later we went to 'The Vault' to see some more.

Opals in The Vault.

And an opal necklace.

The girls were keen to visit the mammals section too, so that was our next port of call.  K & M have a favourite in there, a very small deer, the dikdik.

The dikdik.

We spent quite a while in this section too, before meeting back up with other folks.  The children wanted to have a look in the shop too and most of them spent some (or all!) of the money they had brought with them.  K bought some bookmarks to add to her collection and M bought a wind-up torch. 

K, M & I upstairs to the minerals area and visited The Vault, as I mentioned.  We also had a look at the cross-section of the giant sequoia, which was felled when it was around 1,300 years old.

Just a few of the events during the life of the tree.

Finally, we stumbled across a relatively new gallery: Treasures, in which we read more about various of the particularly significant exhibits that this gallery holds, particularly William Smith's ammonites.  By this time it was nearly time to head back to the coach and everyone was pretty tired.  Everybody was back on the coach, so that we actually left London a few minutes early, which is absolutely unheard of in my experience!  We arrived back in Leicester to a light covering of snow and got back home to Nottingham about 9.15pm.