If you’re a Londoner, how would you spend one day in the city with 3 yr old?

[AmberHollow]

I’d love to bring my 3 year old down to London for the day with me for something a bit different to our normal routine. I don’t know the city particularly well but I’m fine with tube travel and getting around generally.

What are your “must do/see” tips with a 3 year old who is a reasonable walker (not planning on bringing a stroller), but can’t go miles and miles?

We would probably be aiming to get into Euston around 10am and would want to be back there and heading home by around 2pm. So less than a full day! I don’t really know quite where to start so any tips gratefully received.

I'd go upstairs on a hopbon, hop off bus and sit at the front and just watch the sights

Postal museum with soft play and mail rail tickets -recommend 100%. Science Museum and Nat Hist Museum too busy and big for 3 year old.

@AmberHollow if you get (borrow?) a basic umbrella style or one of the more modern ones that fold down small (like a YOLO?) then if needs be you can fold it for the Tube and hook it over your arm just while you are on the escalator.
Also depending on where you go sometimes if a station doesn't have a lift then the next one along does and it's actually only a five minute walk between them so you can just use that station instead.
A lot of stations do have lifts now. Unfortunately South Kensington which is the one for the Science Museum and Natural History Museums doesn't. But it isn't a massive staircase up off the platform.

Science museum and a picnic.

If there are stairs just let the child walk and carry the buggy down / someone else will always offer to help.

Im surprised no one has said the zoo with their new role play building too.

I wouldn't worry about the buggy as long as they're an ok walker and you plan sensibly they'll be fine. I'm a London nanny so I've been going to central London with three year olds for 20 years and never needed one, just plan well!

Personally I find it's not about the walking but more for safety as certain areas get very crowded and unless you lift up a 3 year old and carry them, they can easy get separated or crushed in a crowd.

I think the top of floor of science museum is wasted on a three year old but mine at similar ages have absolutely loved the garden at the science museum which is free and upto around 8 I think.

Not if you hold their hand...

And I would say good planning would include not taking them somewhere so busy they could get crushed! I mean London is busy, but not so busy that pre-schoolers are regularly getting crushed!

Postal museum and Coram Fields are the best idea. Or possibly the science museum

Second that. And once you have paid you have a year of visits.

For a three year old?

My 3yo didn’t like the Transport Museum - she kept getting shoved out of the way by bigger kids. We wouldn’t return unless it was a school day.

The Postal Museum is excellent. Holland Park has an amazing adventure playground for that age group and the Jubilee Gardens play area on the South Bank is also very good (if heaving).

Sitting on the top deck of the bus is also a treat and a good break from walking.

Reins?

You've clearly never tried to cross the road at Oxford Circus.
It's such a bottleneck and everyone gets bunched together.

one of those umbrella style buggies wich fold and can be thrown over the shoulder - a life saver on London Transport , and for a 3 year old, a life saver for you both

Ive been left London for years now, but I remember when GS ( now 20 ) Was 5/6, he was actually obsessed with the National Gallery . He had seen the latest James Bond, where JB meets Q there, and he thought it was the best day ever, that he has a photograph of him there :)

Do some activities but homestly my kids LOVE....

buses
Tube
The Clipper boat
The stupid purple gondola thing that goes over the thames.

They can still get squished. Or bashed on the head by backpacks. Or have cigarette ash dropped on their head.
(all things that happened to my tiny child).
Remember - they'll barely be 1 metre tall.
So much safer in a pushchair. Easier to see by adults and more protected.
In my personal opinion.

You're right! I haven't done that with a three year old. It's not suitable for them, it's too busy. It would be bad planning to take them there!

Why wouldn't you take a 3 year old there?
I mean a lot of people take children to Hamleys because it's a toy shop and if you go by tube you might arrive at Oxford Circus station because it's just down the road.
It's not exactly an unusual place to be with children.

Because as you've just said it's so busy they can get crushed trying to cross the road!! And there are far more exciting places in London than a toy shop full of tourists!

Can I hijack the thread and ask how buses are for young children? Was in London with daughter and 18 month grandson. We stayed at Covent Garden so walked everywhere. On the last morning we were at Hyde Park. I felt we needed to get a move on to the airport and we went for the underground. Oh my I didn’t realize just how deep the tubes are!

We got help from staff when later on we were taking our suitcases and buggy/baby. Would a bus (Holborn to Liverpool Street) have worked - or would it have been more typical to get a cab ?

I’m going back in December with my 15 month granddaughter so already thinking what we should do.

Thanks OP.

@AmberHollow it's up to you if you decide on a buggy or not.
Apologies this thread seems to have gone into a bit of an argument about it.
🙂

Coram’s Fields.

The first time my kids went to London I’d a vague plan to see a museum, but we ended up just going round on public transport cos it was such a novelty for them. We got the tube to
embankment, Thames clipper to the O2 for lunch, cable car across the Thames and then DLR (you can pretend to drive at the front) to Thames Gateway. Quick coffee and cake opposite the Tower of London and we were done. I think we popped into Tate Modern on our way back to the station.