December 19th - Visit London

We started the day at the highly expensive Madame Tussauds.Lucky, we didn;t have to queue too long and soon we were in the musuem. The experience is planned out across four floors and is very clever. You start the tour on the top floor with the 'Party' wax figures, and then make your way down each floor to visit the 'sports' figures, and then the music and political/cultural figures. It can get pretty crowded inside the waxwork museum; people tend to push and shove each other so they can get a good photo with the wax models. Some waxworks are much more popular than others and the crowds for various models can be overwhelming and you have to literally fight your way to have a photo snapped with them. However, the girls soon got into character and started posing next to all the exhibits, some of which they recognised and some I did! We really enjoyed the Spirit of London, where you sit on a london taxi and visit an interactive Timeline of London, as the girls had been learning lots of the history of London at school. We also loved the Marvel 4D cinema show where along with the 3D vision experience, we also had air pressured onto the backs of our necks, and light punches from the back of our seats and the Star wars exhibition which was mostly definitely the highlight of the day.

 We then had a quick look at the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square, looked at the Chrismtas lights and some shop windows. I loved Liberty's Nutcracker themed ones! 

 The we went to Kew Gardens Winter Lights. The mile long, illuminated winter trail begins in the botanic wonderland, framed by two giant, ribbon bedecked Christmas trees, and leads into a starry canopy of 1,700 delicately lit lights. The girls were amazed by the supposedly scented fire garden (although I could only small kerosene) which was inspired by Five Gold Rings from The Twelve Days of Christmas. We allso loved the Tunnel of Lights, composed of more than 60,000 lights, it is a breathtaking instillation, making pictures and patterns to the sound of festive soundtrack favourites. We also stopped and enjoyed Christmas Kew karaoke at the Christmas Juke Box. We then enjoyed some rides, before roasting marshmallows (I had blueberry and gin, G had strawberry and champagne and the others had vanilla). Finally, the trail ends with the spectacular Palm House Pond, which boasts an amazing laser display, of streams of light and flickering orbs that dance in time to music inspired by Christmas classics.