How about a city break with the kids. What a great idea, it’ll be fun and there’ll be loads to do.
The Ratbag’s “best things” guide to a London City break.
(4 little boys aged 8, 7, 5 ,2 go sightseeing in the capital)
1. Riding escalators and pushing lift buttons.
2. The Underground perfect for racing down tunnels, racing up stairs, and testing out echoes.
3. Trafalgar Sq perfect for chasing/terrorising pigeons.
4. The Southbank perfect for filling up the Thames with pea gravel.
5. The Queen’s Jubilee Gardens perfect grass for practising tackling with your brothers.
6. The Apartment perfect playtime with sliding cupboard doors, bathrooms and a sofa bed.
7. Routemaster Bus perfect for trying out all the seats on the top deck.
8. London perfect for playing kick, push, punch Martini style, (Anytime, any place, anywhere)
A parental guide to a London city break.
Don’t bother, stay at home until they are 18.
Defeatist?!
Ok then don’t:
1. Rent an apartment that’s swelteringly hot and whose check in offices are 25 minutes in the opposite direction.
2. Do sell at least two kidneys and perhaps a liver so you can afford to feed and entertain your family of 6 for 2 nights.
3. Enjoy the new audience of 8 million observing your parenting skills as your 2yr old goes into yet another meltdown and your other three play kick, push, punch on the tube.
4. Take a bow as 30 people dining at Browns swing to stare at the source of the highest, longest scream emitted from said 2yr old (unhappy that he’s been stopped from dipping his food into your glass of white wine)
5. Remind yourself minute by minute that you are on holiday and these are precious moments never to be forgotten.
6. Do not leave your baggage unattended at Kings Cross and then try and blame your wife for the security alert.
7. Do not bother with Halfords (Harrods) toy department and the 250% mark up. “Toys R Us is loads better”
8. Take an extra hour to absorb the innocent, pure gorgeousness of their slumbering forms. You’ll need to draw deep upon that love for the journey home.
9. Sigh with relief when you finally crawl into your own bed, Dorothy was right, there’s no place like home xxx
