We didn't visit the Queen...

Had a lovely family day out in London today,giving us a welcome break from GCSE revision and all the stress that goes with it!

It was VERY cold when we left, and indeed was still VERY cold when we reached Osterley to park the car, being greeted by a little flurry of snow!

After a long tube ride to the other side of town, we visited the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green (an offshoot of the V and A Museum). As it is a free attraction it seemed a good place to pass a couple of hours in the relative warm and have lunch prior to going to the theatre.

It was fun to see the really old and not-so-old toys. The boys were fascinated by many of the exhibits, including this Chinese Rock Garden, made with pearl,marble and ivory. It was so intricate, sadly the photo doesn't do it justice.

I loved seeing this:

...what looked like my old Post Office Set...who would have thought I would have ended up at 'Position number 5 please' after playing with it all those years ago!

Dan was impressed with the zoetrope and Cameron with the giant wooden wave machine.

After a tasty lunch of home made soup at the cafe, we moved on to the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane (no, we didn't see the muffin man) for the highlight of the day, to see Oliver! I had bought the tickets back in April last year when the BBC show was on to find Nancy and Oliver and when we knew that the DYT would be doing the show too. After seeing the DYT version a few times it was good to know the story!! In fact I could have gone on stage as Nancy or indeed any of the cast as I knew rather a lot of the script!

Our 'Oliver' was Harry, who did quite well, but I really think Cameron sang and acted better!Cam played the part with a lot more vulnerability. Nancy was fantastic and Rowan Atkinson as Fagin was just superb. He was so funny, doing Blackadder voices on occasions and introducing a bit of ad-lib too. The whole production was amazing with fantastic sets, great ensemble numbers and by the end I was so sad it was over. It was a real feel-good show and is highly recommended!

Thanks to Tesco Deal vouchers we had a meal at Bella Italia, the highlight of which was Rob ordering half a lager and being brought a cafe latte!!! Bit of a 'had to be there' moment but was very funny at the time.

We had a fabulous day...