London baby!

Squashy and I got an extremely rare day out in our own this week. 

We were invited to the launch for the #ruledout campaign by the charity Ambitious about Autism. I will add another post about this. 

So we decided to make a day of it. We got the train down, Squashy hasn't done a log train like that for years and he didn't know what to expect. I prepared him for it and packed him a bag of snacks, books, ear defenders and his kindle. He said it wasn't what he expected, but at first he loved it. I purposely chose a quiter time to travel so it wouldn't be too busy. He passed the first part of the journey reading, while I did a bit of crochet. 

After a while he decided he didn't like the way the train tilted when it was going fast, but managed to distract himself with a bit of kindle-time. 

When we arrived we wanted to get to the Natural History museum, so we got day tickets for the tube. Squashy managed really well on the tubes, the last time we were in London he got quite stressed on them, crouching in the floor with his hands on his ears-hence me bringing ear defenders today. But it wasn't achi holidays, and we didn't have Big man or Momo so I could focus completely on him and it made a difference. I have an app on my phone to tell us which line to get on, which direction, how many stops etc and he enjoyed helping with that. We also got seats on most trains and he preferred that. 

We got to the museum pretty quickly. Last time we tried to come here there was a queue outside so I was crossing my fingers it wouldn't be that busy. We were lucky and there was no queue. We admired the beautiful buding from outside for a bit before we went in. 

Squashy said the colors of the brickwork reminded him of an Egyptian Pharos head dress! I could see what he meant once he told me.

Inside we enjoys exploring the entrance hall. We marveled over the size of 'Dippy' the diplodocus skeleton who greets you. Here he is next to squashy for comparison!

There are loads of really cool and interesting skeletons and fossils in the cases around the entrance, we spent quite a long time exploring them. (I need to hook my camera up to the PC so I can share more pics) 

Squahsy had been on the website before we came and decided he wanted to see the earthquake room. So we found out where it was and headed that way. We passed through more dinosaurs and fossils, he was amazed by some especially a giant sloth skeleton. It was enormous. 

Then there was a gallery of animals and birds, lots of stuffed creatures that I found equally scary and fascinating. We found a turkey (Hubby's nickname for Momo) 

The earthquake room was at the end of the volcano gallery. Squashy was really interested in the volcano exhibits, but there were quite a few school groups so we went to the earthquake room. It really makes you think, it's set up like a supermarket and when the quake hits everything starts shaking and rattling. It shakes you about but nowhere near as much as the real thing. I can't imagine how scary it would be in real life. 

We decided we were hungry after this, so after studying some statues of Swuashys' favourite -Greek mythology, we headed out for lunch. 

It was squashy's choice as I told him it was his treat day, and he decided on a cute little creperie in Kensington. It's in what used to be an old dairy, and still has the original tiles on the walls! 

We really enjoyed our lunch, we both had savory creeps and they were so delicious! But we couldn't resist the desert ones so we shared a strawberry, cream and white chocolate crepe after. 

After lunch we decided to go back into the museum and go to the dinosaur section. 

We had fun walk long through here, it's laid out so you follow a path through a mixture of skeletons, fossils, life size models and