London

Typical London weather resulted in a lot of rain and made sightseeing quite difficult on Thursday. We caught the train in from Windsor to Waterloo Station and walked to the London Eye - the worlds third largest observation wheel - behind the Singapore Flyer and the Star of Nanchang - largest in the Western Hemisphere. Unfortunately, the rain on the glass of the pods made if hard to get really good photos of the fabulous views. I did manage to get some reasonable shots - check them out below:

London Eye and the kids checking out the views...

 The Thames and Charing Cross Station

 Big Ben and Parliament House

 Pod and Parliament House

Big Ben and Parliament House

King George V

Then we went through Westmister Abbey - where Kings and Queens are crowned- and royals are married. Unfortunately, you aren't allowed to take photos in the abbey, so I only have photos of the outside...

After that, we took the hop on hop off bus up to the Museum of Natural History - a free museum with truly fantastic displays.  We entered in the side entrance which takes you straight into the area dedicated to geology and the earth as a planet - both Max and Jemima found the exhibits very interesting.

Then we got to the section that Max was really looking forward to - the animals and dinosaurs.  They had really fantastic displays, although their Australian marsupials looked a bit faded - I've never seen a Tassie Devil that is light grey, let alone a Wombat that colour...

They did have some Dodos and a great collection of fossils on display.

Their Dinosaur skeletons are viewable on two levels, from an elevated walkway and more hands on ground level displays (most of the skeletons were elevated and or kept away from touching - the hands on displays allowed you to understand how Dinosaurs joints worked among other things).

After the dinosaurs, we looked through the mammals section - where they had a number of whale skeletons as well as a full scale blue wale model - by crikey it's huge! You can see it in the behind the Mammoth skeleton below.

For anyone waiting for Sharon's second Legoland post, it is still coming. Sharon just needs to find the time to sit down and write it out, I just wanted to get this one out rather than waiting too long after our day in London.