to hate every single parent and child crowding up South Kensington during half term?!

[misspantomime]

I work in the area and every single evening during every single school holiday it takes me 30 minutes more to get home because a) I cannot walk down the streets as they are too crowded and (b) I cannot get into South Ken station due to crowding and also due to parents letting their kids walk down the road either on scooters or at 0.00000000005 MPH and also not knowing how to use the ticket barriers properly.

I am a Londoner and we are notoriously intolerant of people who can't use the underground properly but even so I never truly knew rage until I started working round here. There are queues all the way down the road. For the fricking science museum.

Moving -nice tip re leaving museum until later in day, but we want to do nhm and Science museum so need to do one morning and one afternoon. Plus it doesn't help with ops point as wherever we go in the morning we will still be using a tube station somewhere, so on someone's commute to work!

Ok, can I ask you londoners a practical question then to avoid standing in anyone's way to work it out on the day: we have visitor oyster cards for dh and I, but not dd as I understand she is free. So how do we get her through the barriers?

Some of those tourists on the early morning tube have probably been there since the day before and don't know when to get off. I've been round the Circle line a few times myself.

whats an oyster card?

ok ok sorry that was flamey. bad cub bad bad cub

MrsD they have gates for families/buggies/wheelchair users and people with luggage. Go through those with your DD.

Do you Boris will be involved in the ceremony Squoosh?? I'm having visions of him kicking a tourists camera off the top of a London bus like he did for the Olympics ceremony thing!

Good god woman, you're going to do both in a day! All day?! You're braver than me

Ok, here's what I do go to the "dinosaur museum" early afternoon - there will be a queue to get in of about half an hour but this is a good time to queue if it's not raining. Spend a maximum of two hours there (and more and a breakdown is likely) then go to the Science Museum next door where there is unlikely to be a queue. Time it so you leave just before closing and then have an early supper before heading back to hotel/home.

With your dd head to the wider barriers with a buggy sign and keep her close in front, then she goes through when you swipe and you follow.

Avoid the tube generally when you're visiting and take the bus. You see more and after rush hour it's actually quite pleasant to be on the top deck.

Hope you have a great trip!

When queuing spot the animals carved in the building. It helps to pass the time...

MrsDumbledore just go through the wider gates with her - they are usually at the far side of each set of barriers. There's room for a parent and child to walk through together.

Boris will be there Gothic. Music from Right Said Fred and a few sacrificings of slow walking tourists. A fun day out for all the commuters.

YANBU, when not on mat leave, I work by West Ken station and used to venture to South Ken for Bens Cookies and Hummingbird cupcakes some lunchtimes.

Its a NIGHTMARE. Every single child in the whole of London with accompanying scooter and backpack and carrier bag full of souvenir dinosaurs is on the platform. Good luck on your journey home later

Except we won't be there. Because that would involve pausing on the pavement

We might do the Commuter Marathon. It's like Tough Mudder but harder, with trolley bags to negotiate, broken escalators, slow moving foreign tourists, entirely families wearing mahoosive back packs and the winner is the first one to board a train at Waterloo on the Jubilee line.

Sounds perfect! If there could also be a sacrificial burning of some golfing umbrellas & tourist backpacks I think that would round it off nicely!

I'm also going throw tourist families in matching raincoats into the sacrificial pit.

EatShit an Oyster card is a plastic card you load your travelcard onto. You can use it on all London public transport. They have done away with paper tickets now.

If like me you don't buy weekly/monthly/yearly travelcards then you can PayAsYouGo - I just load the Oyster up with credit from time to time and then I can tap in & out of tube/bus/train. It is great as it will cap your travel costs at the rate for Bus day pass or general Travelcard day pass automatically.

They are becoming slightly redundant for many people now though as you can use your contactless debit or credit card as an "oystercard" nowadays.

Buses in London are £1.50 per journey capped at £4.40 per day or £21 per week

£21 per week sounds like such good value.

But you usually get a McDonalds or Burger King voucher on the back of it
:)

These days buses in London are excellent! Apart from on Sundays when the bus lanes don't operate and buses get stuck in gridlock along with all the cars.

Have you seen the gorgeous new Routemasters?

They are v gorgeous those new Routemasters. And the DCs were very excited by the super new hydrogen bus we spotted at the weekend.

love them - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Routemaster

We only get KFC on the back of our bus tickets.