Yesterday we all went to The Natural History Museum in London It's actually quite a reasonable day out. One of biggest expenses was travel. The UK isn't the cheapest for getting around but there's a few tricks we know.
Firstly we do our journey in two parts, we drive up to the London outskirts (in our case Richmond) then park for the day (£12.50) and take the tube in (2x adult day tickets £12)
£24.50 to get a family of five into the centre of London.
Our next task is to negotiate the maze of corridors and exhibitions. Luckily there is an app for that! And it's free!!! The app saved us so much time finding pushchair accessible routes, the nearest loo or baby change, the dinosaur room etc.
I highly recommend popping it on your phone before you go.
Important frugal tip! Take a pack lunch, the museum has a fantastic air conditioned picnic area in the basement. It can be loud if there are schools visiting but there are toilets galore, bins everywhere, comfy benches and even vending machines slightly cheaper than the cafés.
Don't forget to make your donation to the museum. I know its free to enter and a donation is only suggested but. .. This place costs money to run! It needs lighting and heating and loo roll just like any where else so pop something in the donation bin as you pass. We donated £10.
Dun dun dunnnnnn! The gift shop is a place of fear and high prices for parents. Here's a huge frugal tip that will save you loads! Don't go (but pretend you did!)
During our day out OH mysteriously disappeared for ten minutes. In reality he was taking some photos from a viewing gallery but we told the children they had been so good he was getting them a treat from the gift shop.
We bought the colouring sets a few days ago in the pound shop!
And last but not least, plan your day!
Some exhibits are more popular than others. Plan to visit them either first as soon as it opens or at the end before it closes.
The dinosaurs and the creep crawlies ate hugely popular at the Natural History museum, we avoid them until 4.30 and walked straight into both.
When we visited The Vault at 10.30am we were the only ones there and had a nice chat with the security guard on duty about the exhibits he was watching.
So there you have it, a few sanity and money saving tips for your trip to the Natural History Museum.
X x x
P.S; don't forget to rub Darwins beard for luck!
Looks like a great day out - we love the museums in London and took advantage of them lots when the kids were little. (We still do, but there are many other things we do these days as well.) Of course, we are doubly lucky in that our local train station is in London Zone 4 (even though we have a Surrey post code) so we don't have quite as much expense getting into London in the first place. I don't know if you know about the Princess Diana Memorial Playground, which is in Kensington Gardens - it's about 15 minutes walk (maybe a little more with littles) from the museums, and is really awesome - great pirate ship, among other cool climbing things. We often combined a trip to a museum with a trip to the playground - great for picnicking on the grass as well. https://www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/kensington-gardens/things-to-see-and-do/sports-and-leisure/diana-memorial-playground
ReplyDeleteThought of another tip about gift shops - when the kids get older, they of course want to choose their own things from the gift shop, so what I used to do was let them go, but they had to use their own pocket money to buy something - if they don't have pocket money regularly on a weekly basis, you can allocate a one off thing - you may spend £3 in the gift shop (or whatever). Amazing how much less likely they are to want unnecessary stuff when it's their own money they are spending!
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