London in July with kids

[agggtm]

I want to take the kids on a day trip or possibly overnight stay to London one weekend in July . It’s about 2 hours on the train then we would do London eye, get lunch and do a museum probably science one in the afternoon. Then either come home or stay over.

dh thinks it will be heaving and hot in July and there will be massive queues and kids will be hot and bothered.

he said sept/Oct will be better. Is he right? We rarely visit London so I’m not sure.

How old are the kids?

I tend to agree with your dh. It is likely to be hot and heaving. The big museums will probably be quite uncomfortable.

October half term weather can be very pleasant. Places will still be busy, but less so than in July.

The free museums (science, natural history etc) get hideously crowded in summer holidays. The queues are long and it’s not a pleasant experience.

if you can manage an inset day when most schools are back it’s a lot better

It's not that bad in summer. You need to book the free tickets and generally it means there are few or very short queues only. We loved the science museum, but we did also pay for the extra interactive area, which was very worth it. We also just enjoy wandering through one of the parks, going to look at Buckingham Palace and Big Ben etc. We've always really enjoyed our trips.

Just to add, I don't know what the weather has been like where you are this week, but down here in the SE temperatures have been hitting 30. You really don't want to be planning a trip to London with young children If there's any chance of a heatwave.

It’s rarely as hot as this in London over the summer.

there’s so much to do even with summer crowds.

You could get theatre tickets on kids week.

How old are they? My kids love the Thames Rib boat when it’s hot.

8 and 10

It would be a Saturday or Sunday in July before school hols first or second weekend

8 and 10 will probably cope better than younger kids if it's hot and crowded. But I might forget the museum and do something like a boat trip on the Thames (Uber boat, not tourist boat) and/or walk from Traf Sq through St James's Park to Buck Palace.

And a ride on top of a doubledecker bus (again not a tourist bus) and on the Tube if they've never done it.

Don't go near Oxford Street.

Can they do some research and come up with ideas?