A Hip2trek adventure to the big smoke – London!

We’ve been promising the kids a visit to London for ages, so with a bank holiday it was a great opportunity for us to go down on the train. It’s just over three hours for us so we bought activity packs for the kids and they were happy to read their books and look out of the window as we zipped along.
We pre-bought visitor oyster cards and had them posted to us so that when we arrived we were ready to ride the tube. I thought the kids might be frightened with it being so busy with lots of escalators, lifts and trains to navigate. They weren’t bothered and enjoyed looking out for all the stations. I also felt a bit better as I’m doing this journey by myself in a few weeks with my big trek bags, this was good practice.
We stayed in a Premier Inn at Earl’s Court getting a family room, we’ve always found them to be clean and comfortable and if you eat there for breakfast the kids eat for free. My son always takes advantage of the cooked breakfast and this time the pancakes with chocolate spread!  I didn’t mind as we a full day of wandering around planned so he needed a full tummy.
With a long list the kids wanted to tick off we headed for Hyde Park and Marble Arch. The park was lovely and we even got some plank training in!
The usual sights were on our list including a visit to the see the Queen of course! We also bought a City Cruise hop-on hop-off family rover ticket and spent a few hours cruising up and down the Thames, making it down to Greenwich for a wander. The tall ships festival was on so there was a real buzz about the place with people dressed up and lots of little stalls. We were so lucky with the weather and even had some glorious sunshine.
After the boat trip, we wandered around Westminster (no sign of Larry at Downing Street), Trafalgar Square and eventually making it to Chinatown and Leicester Square where we had a great meal in a Chinese restaurant. We had worked up quite an appetite now and despite some sitting on the boat had walked over 7 miles.
Our final day and we had a quick whizz around The Natural History Museum as my Daughter was desperate to see the Triceratops. We’d thankfully gone early and the queues when we went in were quite small despite a bag security check. She loved the Dinosaur exhibition and bought her own Triceratops from the Dino store as an early birthday present. We got a bit lost inside and with a train to catch we didn’t have time to explore.
On the way there we had walked through the stunning Kensington gardens and stumbled upon the newly opened Princess Diana Memorial garden. It was beautiful and the lovely weather had meant some of the flowers had come out early.
In no time at all our weekend in the big smoke was over. The kids loved London and even before we left they said they wanted to visit again. There were a few sleepy heads on the train home!
For more pictures visit my Facebook page.
​All views are my own and I received no incentive to write this.

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