Day trip central London ideas with dc?

[4andnotcounting]

Hi all.
i am going to central London tomorrow with my ds9, DS 11 and DS 17.
any suggestions / itinerary of what we should do? (Low budget friendly if possible)

last year we walked around and saw Houses of Parliament, Buckingham palace, Big Ben, the bridge ( but we had my eldest DS with us and he took charge so I didn’t need to plan 🙈)

I was originally going to go to the natural history museum but I’ve heard the queues are really long (does anyone know how long it would take to get in if we joined the queue on a Tuesday) I have taken them there before but that was about 6/7 years ago.

weve been to the science museum too a couple of years ago and experienced the wonderlab.

any suggestions will be gratefully received!

thank you!

Imperial War Museum?

We’ve just been to natural history and science museums, with both you can pre book free tickets online and walk straight in

Boat trip towards Tower Bridge. Air car over the river towards the docks.

The Tower Bridge experience is really good and not overly expensive. Probably takes a couple of hours.

The cable cars over the Thames are fun, you can do a return trip or just go one way.

We’ve done city cruises a couple of times from Greenwich to Westminster- the crew do a fab commentary and you see loads. Also not too expensive.

Horizon 22 is free, you just need to book.
Higher than the Shard I think.

For the NHM go through the "Earth Galleries" entrance (formerly the Geological Museum) round the corner on Exhibition Road. The queues are always shorter. The two museums have been knocked together now, and you can walk between them (Life Galleries = NHM; Earth Galleries = Geological Museum). Ok, so it's not the beautiful iconic entrance of the NHM, but you can see bomb damage to the stucco columns from WW2, which j always used to find fascinating.

Do not go to the museum gift shops if you're on a budget. They are full of lovely and very pricey things!

Echo this. My daughter loved the cable car!

Tower of London? And a boat trip is always fun.

Take the Uber boat down to Greenwich (I think there's a discount if you have railcards). You could visit the Cutty Sark, Maritime Museum, the Observatory, picnic in Greenwich Park, hire pedalos, look around the market, walk under the Thames in Brunel's foot tunnel, go yo Mudchute City Farm, get in the front of DLR train so your youngest can 'drive' it. ( If you get lucky, the conductor might even let them press the red button to make the train go). You can take the cable car to O2, and if you have the money and head for heights, climb over the O2 roof.

You can pre-book your tickets to the NHM/Science museum (although all the timeslots might have gone by now). For future reference in school holidays you prob want to book them a week out to get an early morning timeslot in the school holidays.

Fortnum and Mason ice cream parlour was always a favourite with mine.

My 11 and 8 year old enjoyed Frameless, one of those immersive art displays. My next trip we are planning to get the Thames Clipper down the river then go to Tate Modern.

You could do the South Bank - it's our absolute favourite way to spend a day in London;

• The London Eye if you wanted, although that's a bit spendy (pre book tickets and you can often get a deal)
• watch the skateboarders under the South Bank centre
• Tate modern for a bit of culture
• Shakespeare's globe
• Borough market if you get that far.
• the best views along the river.

Have a great day!

The coach has dropped us off at natural history museum. My DS wants to go on the cable cars. Does anyone know which one of closer?

Silly question but how long is the cable car ride?

Citymapper app will give you distances and best routes to everywhere. Walkking and public transport.
Have a great day!

Are you in receipt of UC?

Horizon 22 or the lookout .

Not anymore, but my children were forever 6

I asked because a lot of places offer UC tickets for much cheaper.

Thank you for all your help!

We didn’t get told where we would be dropped off. I booked it last minute and forgot to ask the coach driver before boarding.

We rode the tube for the first time today (and got separated !) - lesson learned to get on and off super quick!
we rode the cable cars (didn’t feel very long at all (I had my eyes closed beucse I am a wimp)
i unintentionally panicked the children, became flustered and lost my bearings (I don’t keep well)
but I saw their faces and then remembered to put my game face back on and the trip ended well.

Happy bunnies.

The kids did love the cable cars though!