Natural History Museum - Kensington, London

Natural History Museum

Cromwell Road

Kensington

SW7 5BD

 

 

I remember going to the Natural History Museum when I was at school, the things that stuck in my mind where going on the escalator up through the world sculpture, the earthquake simulator and the huge diplodocus skeleton as you walked in through the front door.  I hadn't been for years and then earlier this week we took Oliver.  Jay had taken Oliver last Sept when he was feeling brave - deciding to take him on his own (crazy man).  When they went Oliver was desperate to see Andy's clock. Andy is a character from his favourite program 'Andy's prehistoric Adventures' and the clock is his time travelling machine which takes him back to the time of the dinosaurs he wants to visit.  Andy works in the Natural History museum, hence that's where the clock lives.  In Sept the clock wasn't there, probably being used for filming but this week it was! He spotted it straight away, madly pointing and shouting 'Andy's clock!!'  It was pretty awesome to see the look on his face.



 

In fact he was in awe all day, in his element looking at all the dinosaurs and animals.  Don't get me wrong he's only 2 and a half so it was a bit of a whirl wind of 'wow look at this!' 2 seconds later 'what's next?' it was a mad dash to take in as much as his little sponge of a brain could take in! But it was so lovely to see him excited, as excited as we both were when we used to go there as children.  Even now there is something about walking into the main hall which takes your breath away a bit.  A blue whales skeleton hangs from the ceiling in place of the diplodocus and the architecture of the building is so beautiful.  It really is an incredible building. 




Its free to go into the museum, although you are encouraged to make a donation and they make it even easier for you by a contactless tap your card system on a £5, £10 or £15 donation.  Most of the museum is free but there are special exhibits which you do need to pay for if you want to view them.  With Oliver it wasn't worth doing them, but otherwise I would have done the wildlife photographer of the year for sure! Maybe I will go back for that one!

We decided to take packed lunch to save a few pennies, and there is a 'picnic' area downstairs where you can sit and eat your own food.  It is also the schools picnic area and it was pretty noisy and full of school kids on their trips but when you have a two year old, its then alright if he makes a bit of noise or decides to run around the table, so that was fine.  There is a restaurant called the T-Rex grill and a café but they were fairly pricey.  There is also a dinosaur related shop and a main shop.  The main shop contained all of the same dino stuff and more though.  Again lots of pricey stuff but also little bits for a few pounds so you could get a fairly cheap souvenir. 

There is so much to see, we spent a few hours in there, but that was a speed round of literally following Oliver about, you could easily spend a whole day in there or more to do it properly.  Its pretty crazy the amount of stuff they have there, one huge room was packed with so many animals and skeletons of immense size you literally didn't know what to look at first!



 


Going up to London with a small child is not something we do often, especially if I were on my own I would find it hard, as you have the dilemma of do I take a buggy or not? Will I end up carrying him when he gets tired, as well as all our stuff? Its hard work, and just walking around the museum is tiring enough without considering how to get there.  Because we went on a weekday Jay actually decided to drive up and when we looked at parking we found a hotel close to the museum offered bookable parking for 6 hours for £23.  It sounds a lot but when you consider how much you are going to pay for two adults to travel around London for the day on public transport its not much difference and it saved us the worry of navigating around the trains and museum with a buggy, we could leave it at home!  Its worth considering to save your sanity and your back!  It took us about one hours drive.  Just a note as well its £2 per item for the cloakroom!! I thought that was a bit outrageous that it would cost us £6 to put 3 coats in...we then ended up dragging them around with us.

Highly recommend this as a day out, if your child is at the age where they are interested in everything, it fascinates them to see so many different things in one place! 'Oliver what was your favourite thing about today?' 'Andy's clock and the 2 moving raptors.  T-Rex I didn't like too much, he was a bit very scary mummy.  We go back tomorrow?'