A whole lot of nothing

This post was inspired by Mara at The Mother of All Trips ‘Mondays are for dreaming’ posts.  Expect to see a lot more of these over the coming year…

 

Stanfords, probably the best travel bookshop in the world, had a 3 for 2 offer on Lonely Planets the other day.  Well it would have been rude not to partake, so I came home with, amongst other things, the Lonely Planet for Western Australia.

I first visited Western Australia on my last round the world trip, aged 19 and quickly fell in love with the vast, empty, red land.  Most backpackers head to the East coast for surfing, partying and recovering from hangovers on the beach.  Being the dweeby teenager that I was, I preferred to camp under the stars and marvel at the ginormous distances between towns, in a place where a town is often little more than a petrol station with a campsite attached.  Growing up in London, the idea of all this remote nothingness was deeply and appealingly different.

I’ve dreamt of going back to Western Australia ever since and it’s been a fixture on next year’s itinerary from day one.  In quiet moments this weekend I’ve been escaping to my new Lonely Planet guide,  basking in the imagined warmth of the sun beating down on the red earth as I’ve plotted our route up the coast.  I’ve read about incongruous Baroque Cathedrals in small outback towns; snorkelling with dolphins in turquoise waters; open cast mines where the dumper trucks are as big as houses; cooking crayfish on the barbie at the beach; watching turtle eggs hatch by moonlight; hunting for dinosaur footprints at low tide; watching films at open air cinemas with the Southern Cross twinkling overhead; abandoned, ghostly, gold rush towns in the heart of nowhere; tours of the mangrove swamps with Aboriginal guides demonstrating how to spear fish; national parks with deep gorges and thundering waterfalls; and about driving the best part of 3,000 kilometres, hour upon hour upon hour of red dirt, brassy blue skies and kangaroos.

Can’t wait.

 

Visit a gallery, take in a show, have a nap…

Or 8 things to do in London with toddlers

As a lifelong Londoner I may be biased, but London is a fantastic place to visit with children, with so many options it’s sometimes hard to choose.  It is not however an obvious destination with toddlers, with most attractions being more suitable for older children or adults.   But what if you want to visit London with your toddler?  You don’t need to be confined to soft-play hell to keep them happy, there are actually lots of things to do which will appeal to everyone, adults, older children and toddlers too.

As preparation for your trip, I’d recommend you read Paddington at the Palace and James Mayhew’s Katie in London.  Both these books are great favourites with our children, who love pointing out the landmarks they recognise as we travel around the city.   Now you’re all prepared, let’s go…

Ride on a bus: I don’t know a toddler who doesn’t get a thrill at sitting in the front seat on the top deck of a red London bus.  Despite seeing double decker buses on a daily basis, our children always used to shout “BUS” every time they saw one as toddlers, and bus counting is still one of Dickon’s favourite games.  Some of the routes are as good as the sightseeing tours, and considerably cheaper.  Try route 15, which is an old fashioned routemaster bus (though not great with buggys) or any of the routes which go through Trafalgar Square, Whitehall and Parliament Square.  If your toddler is transport obsessed, why not make their year and take them to the London Transport Museum.  Just watch out for the scary dummy people.

Take in a show: I’m not suggesting that you take your toddler to see Chekhov or Shakespeare, but London has a thriving children’s theatre scene, with a number of theatres putting on plays specifically aimed at toddlers.  Theatres such as the Polka, the Unicorn and the Peacock put on truly innovative and charming shows.  I may not get out much, but I can honestly say that the production of Princess and the Pea we saw at the Polka was the most delightful thing I’ve ever seen in a theatre.

Visit the National Gallery: I know that it’s not obviously toddler friendly, but bear with me on this one.  If you want to see some world class art, there are ways to make it fun for your toddler too.  Every Sunday and during the school holidays they have themed magic carpet story telling sessions for under fives, based on an individual picture.  You can also print off your own personal itinerary focussed on one of a number of themes like toddler friendly dogs, cats or nativity scenes.  We went last Christmas and had a lovely time running from room to room spotting nativity scenes with the children pointing out their school play characters with great excitement.

Horniman Museum: this South London museum is a veritable treasure trove with amongst other things – stuffed animals, voodoo temples, an aquarium, musical instruments, African masks,  a fabulous ethnographic collection and a large and beautiful garden with farm animals.  Throughout the week they have hands on sessions, storytelling, art activities and concerts and more.  There is so much to do here that even the most restless toddler cannot fail to be entertained.  It’s a little out of the way, but it’s truly one of London’s hidden treasures.

Museum of London: this venue tells the story of London from pre-history to the present day.  As well as precious artefacts behind glass, the galleries are laid out in such a way that there are things to entertain the children while you look around.  The highlight for us has to be the amazing full scale reproduction of a Saxon house with props to play with and sound effects for authenticity.  The adults happily looked around the whole of the gallery while they played in the house, which they had to be dragged out of forcefully.  They also run plenty of family art activities at weekends and in the holidays as well as a weekly baby rhyme time and a toddler group.  The modern galleries are currently closed for renovation, due to re-open in Spring 2010.

Big outdoor event: One thing Londoners do really well are the huge outdoor parades and celebrations.  They can be very exciting for toddlers as well as older children, as long as you plan your day carefully.   Most toddlers love flypasts (Trooping of the Colour), marching soldiers (also Trooping of the Colour), giant balloons (New Year’s Day parade), dancing dragons (Chinese New Year) and boy scouts in silly costumes (Lord Mayor’s Show).  I think the key to visiting these events with very young children is to take a buggy (or other method of preventing escape) and to stay on the fringes so you get a flavour of the celebrations without being overwhelmed by huge crowds or queueing for hours.  Queueing not being an activity that toddlers are keen on.

Museum of Childhood: As it’s name suggests, this is a museum of childhood not a children’s museum, but it has to be one of the best museums to visit with small children.  It is very thoughtfully laid out, with every section having something to engage both adults and children of different ages.  So, there are precious antique dolls houses behind glass next to a sturdy wooden dolls house set up for playing with and next to the antique Punch and Judy puppets, there are two toy theatres with puppets, one tall, one small and a small sandpit with buckets and spades.  There are also comfy reading corners, dressing up and a great cafe.

St James’ Park and Changing of the Guard: London has many beautiful parks which I haven’t recommended as I’ve tried to avoid things that you could do anywhere.  St James’ Park is however a bit different.  It’s a pretty park, with a nice playground, and not only does it have the added bonus of soldiers in shiny helmets on real horses (on Horse Guards Parade by Whitehall), it is also home to a number of pelicans, which you can watch being fed fresh fish at 2.30pm every day.  The best reason to visit St James’ Park however, is that it’s a great spot to watch the Changing of the Guard, which is at 11.30am daily in summer and every other day in winter.  The area around Buckingham Palace gets really crowded, but if you stand on the edge of the park you get a good overall view as you are slightly higher than most of the crowd.  Toddlers adore watching the soldiers in their red coats and busbies, it really is the stuff of fairytales.  The first time we took Eve aged just three, she took one look at the soldiers on horseback and sighed “Mummy, look at the real princes”.

A trip to London with toddlers can be really fun, and if you’re lucky, they’ll have a nap on the way home.

Ribbit Ribbit

I first tried Vietnamese food as a small child in the amazing indoor market in Toulon, near my grandparents’ house in the South of France.  There were a large number of Vietnamese refugees in that part of the world in the early 80’s and my brother and I used love visiting the elderly man who sat cross legged on the counter of his market stall, to watch him deftly folding fillings into rice paper wrappers, the pyramid of finished spring rolls growing quickly at his side.  We usually bought a box of the crunchy fried rouleaux de printemps to reheat at home as well as some of the uncooked summer rolls with the prawns showing pinkly through the soft rice paper wrapper, to munch whilst exploring the market.

Vietnamese food came to London when I was a teenager and we would occasionally visit the only Vietnamese restaurant we knew of, falling in love with Bun, the rice noodle salad with fistfuls of fresh herbs, a sweet, salty chilli dressing, and addictive chargrilled meat or fish marinated in lemongrass.  Nowadays, London has lots of Vietnamese restaurants and Kingsland Road in Shoreditch is Vietnam-town, with a string of cafes, restaurants and grocers servicing the lucky people of East London.

As West Londoners, we’ve made the pilgrimage to Shoreditch for our Vietnamese fix from time to time, but it’s a long way to go for a plate of spring rolls, so imagine my excitement when I discovered that one of the East London restaurants was opening a branch not ten minutes walk from our house.  The children were off school last week, so off we went to try out our new neighbourhood Vietnamese restaurant, Mien Tay.  Vietnamese restaurant menus in London can be disappointing, with too many dishes that are clearly toned down for Western tastes or lifted straight off Chinese takeaway menus.  Happily, the menu at Mien Tay is full of Vietnamese favourites like Bun and Pho, and plenty of frog and eel dishes to keep even the most adventurous eater happy.  Ned was very keen to try both frogs’ legs and using chopsticks and did a pretty good job with both.  I have lots of worries about taking our children travelling, but luckily food isn’t one of them.

Vietnam’s currently a ‘maybe’ on our itinerary, but I’m hoping to move it up into the ‘definite’ category.  After a lifetime of eating Vietnamese food outside of Vietnam, I think it’s about time I tried the real thing.

This post is part of Wanderfood Wednesday. For more travel food stories, head here.

If you do that one more time…

I think I’d probably be quite an irresponsible parent if had no worries at all about uprooting our family to travel the world for nine months.  We’ll be giving up school, work, renting out our house, all of these things are fraught with potential problems and I’m a planning type, who likes to think through every possible scenario before it happens.

One of the things that I worry about is how we’ll manage spending 24 hours a day together for nine months.  Steve is used to spending most of his daytime hours at work and the children are used to being at school and nursery all week.  Like most families, sometimes we get on well, sometimes we fight.  I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to separate the boys as they try to gouge each others eyes out because one of them has the precious red power ranger/bear flag/blue train/knight’s sword/helicopter (delete according to phase of moon) that his brother can’t live without.  I’m sure I’m not the only parent who looks forward to the children’s bedtime some days.  In fact, thanks to Twitter, I know I’m not.  So how are we going to manage in a small hotel room without killing each other?

Well last night I had a bit of an epiphany.  I say a bit, because I haven’t sorted world peace, but I did realise something important.  The more time we spend together, the better we get on.  This half term we stayed at home for the week, endured one sick bug and three disgusting colds, occasionally venturing out to visit the playground or spend half a day at the local children’s zoo.  Whilst at home we watched a lot of TV, but we also baked, stuck leaves on paper, built train sets, read stories, played Jenga, dressed up and constructed Lego towers.  The bunk bed was very busy being a cave, ship and desert island, sometimes all three at once.  And do you know what?  We all had a really lovely time with hardly any arguing.  On the whole, the children really enjoyed each others company and spent hours being pirates, dogs and castaways.

Contrast this with yesterday afternoon when I picked up the eldest two after their first day back at school.  Within minutes they were fighting over who got to hold the dog lead (we are currently dog sitting), because of course they couldn’t possibly hold it together.  We got home and there was yet more arguing over who got which Halloween sweet, who was kicking who on the sofa while they watched TV, which was the only thing they wanted to do, who got to sit where at tea time and who got the blue plate.  By bathtime a very tired five and three year old were having a full on fist fight over the red power ranger (the moon must be in it’s first quarter) with tears and screaming galore, refusals to share a bath and plenty of shouting from me.

I’m not a fantasist, I realise that spending nine months travelling with my family will not all be easy.  But I do think that it might be quite fun.  After a busy day at school, they were tired, grumpy and bad company.  After a week spent together they were friends.   Well that’s one less thing to worry about.

Recipe for Half Term Harmony

1. Take one small boy, dressed as a dog, and add to a city farm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Mix with vegetables of your choice.  Carrots and broccoli go well with this dish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Combine the vegetables with a guinea pig.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Continue until the guinea pig is full.  Repeat steps 3&4 with rabbits, chickens, turkeys and donkeys.

 

 

 

 

It’s a small world tip – if no dog outfit is available, another animal outfit may be substituted

Stockist information - London has many city farms, see here for details

This post is part of Photo Friday at Delicious Baby. For more lovely travel pictures, click here