“A portrait of my child, once a week, every week, in 2016.”
On the road again…
We got back from a wonderful weekend in Barcelona last night (more on that to follow), and are now en route to London for another whistlestop visit.
My routine is completely shot, and I’m trying desperately to reel in my to do list before it spirals completely out of control.
This one, of course, is taking it all in his stride.
Linking up with Jodi at Practising Simplicity for The 52 Project.
Other than our discovery of the playground at Coram’s Fields, the hands down highlight of last week’s trip to London for Arthur had to be the London Transport Museum. As a self-confessed transport geek I’ve always loved it myself – and it turns out that for a toddler it is pretty much heaven.
He’d already been overwhelmed with the excitement of being surrounded by buses and taxis and trains as we made our way around the city, and as soon as he saw the vehicles inside the museum he was off.
He was particularly drawn to this vintage car, desperate to be allowed to climb up over the luggage and sit inside.
Fortunately there was plenty else to distract him. He loved the scrolling lights inside one of the side exhibition spaces – they made him jump at first, but he was soon fascinated by the words and images all around him.
He was very taken by the miniature tube trains too – I think he spent about ten minutes pressing the buttons so he could watch them travel along their little tracks and back again, roping in any passing kids he could to join in too.
I think I was a bit more excited than him by the full size tube train simulation, but he was intrigued by the tunnel rushing by.
He found it much easier to get hands on with the driving in the All Aboard area, bouncing between the riverboat, train and bus like a pro.
Once he’d warmed up a bit he was ready to tackle his favourite ride of all: a full size London bus.
We had a fantastic afternoon, the only downside of which was that he then spent the rest of the week trying to get into the driver’s seat of the buses we travelled on. We’ll be heading back for sure next time we’re in the city, and in the meantime there is a little wooden tube train on his train tracks to remind him of his trip to London Town.
Today the word that sums up the week that was is:
This week we travelled to London and back, and went all over the city in between. In doing so we might have broken records, I think, for the amount of different types of transport we used!
We started early on Saturday morning on the train to London, a little bit sleepy but invigorated by the view and our breakfast picnic.
Most of the weekend was spent traversing the city by tube and bus, and on Sunday afternoon Arthur went on a miniature train on a ride in Hyde Park: I wasn’t sure what he’d make of it at first but his big cousin Ilya looked after him!
Then on Monday we set off for a bit of an adventure. We took the tube across to Bank, then hopped on the DLR out to the Docklands. Arthur loved looking at all the tall buildings and even got to help drive the train.
Then the highlight of the journey: we took a cable car across the river! The views were amazing, and Arthur couldn’t decide whether we were in an aeroplane or a helicopter.
We stopped off for lunch by the MIllenium Dome, then caught a river boat back into town.
Arthur was pretty sleepy by this point, so was happy to lie back and look at the view while he had a bit of a feed.
The next day it was time to head home, so it was back on the big train for the journey back to Brixham. We were all very pleased to see the sea: London was lovely, but it’s just not Devon!
Since we’ve been back Arthur has been making choo choo noises, looking out for helicopters and aeroplanes overhead and loving playing with the ride-on car he got for Christmas.
He was particularly excited at his Music with Mummy session yesterday morning: as it happens the theme this term is transport, and with everything he’s experienced this week it suddenly all seemed to make a lot more sense…
