Dinosnores

P and I spent the evening at Dinosnores at the Natural History Museum. We enjoying a wide range of fun activities over the course of the night, which in our case included torch-lit trails, Dino-design t-shirt making, science show all about sharks, breakfast of a hot drink , apple juice, muffin and a yoghurt and the educative session with animal man in the morning. It was expensive with ticket prices are adult £60, Each child must be accompanied by an adult, and the required ratio for adults to children is, as set by the Museum is:   for 1 child- 1 adult required, for 2-4 children- 2 adults required, meaning I could only take 1 child much to E's disappointment. It was also very hot when we went - everyone was dripping with sweat.

 After the event finished we went to Sensational Butterflies. Unlike the museum itself which is free to enter, the butterfly exhibition has an entrance fee of about £6. And be prepared to shed some layers when you go in, because it is hot - we went early in the morning so it was ok! There are lots of butterfly house volunteers to question and point out eggs, caterpillars and chrysalis.

 Then we went to the Shrek Adventure. You can't take photos in there (presumably because you then buy the ones they take!). The tour starts off with the highlight of the experience - a bus ride which was a brilliant 4D cinematic experience – you feel like you really are flying through the sky above London and beyond. As you fly you meet various characters from the DreamWorks stable including Po from Kung Fu Panda, Hiccup and Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon and the penguins from Madagascar. Finally the bus is surrounded by some scary witches on broomsticks and it crash lands in the forest, squashing Rumpelstiltskin’s favourite witch in the process. We were then ushered us off the bus and directed to escape through the forest before Rumpelstiltskin and the other witches found us. By this point it felt like we were in the story – and P found it a little bit scary (she is so not brave!). I won’t give away everything that happened on our journey but we went in search of safety through a series of scenes with different fairy tale characters. It was entertaining and interactive and felt a bit like taking part in a pantomime. However, the end of the tour was an anticlimax. We’d managed to escape to safety, with the help of Shrek, Puss in Boots and various other characters and it felt like there should be a finale – something to mark the end of the performance. Instead of which we filed out into a corridor where we could line up to have our photo taken with Shrek. P didn’t want to wait for that so we made our way out past the people trying to sell us a £25 book of photos of our experience, past the models of characters from DreamWorks films, through the gift shop and outside to the busy Southbank.

 We wondered along South bank enjoying the many street performers there.

 I persuaded P to visit the Tate Modern where we looked at few of the more famous works before visiting the gift shop!

 We then carried on walking along before stopping to play in the water fountains by Tower bridge.

We then caught the train home exhausted!