London With Kids: Art Edition

What? There is more to see in London? hehehe

Somehow a couple of months ago I randomly found tickets for THE “Nutcracker” ballet, performed by the English National Ballet. I have seen this ballet a couple of times-once in Ukraine when I was little and once in Utah when I was in high school.  Our kids had never been to a ballet in their lives, so I thought this would be a good start. Mark was barely five on January 3rd, and that was great because under 5s were not permitted to most performances.

The ballet performance did not start till 2:30 pm, so we decided to use this opportunity in London to go see something new. We took the tube to Trafalgar Square (our theater was nearby) and let the kids run around a bit.

Look at this awesome view of Admiral Nelson and Big Ben.

And look at this awesome Blue Rooster! hahaha Apparently a new statue is displayed on that pedestal for a period of time (it’s very honorable to have your statue to be chosen for display here).

Alex is still learning how to take pictures…of some strange men smoking-hahaha…

….and pigeons on monuments’ heads.

Trafalgar Square is also where you will find the National Gallery—a real treasure! A FREE museum with surprisingly interesting collection. We ate our packed lunch in the sitting area inside the museum and got ready for some art viewing.

Entrance is free, but audio guides cost  GBP3.50 (about $5.50) for each adult, plus the kids got them for free. They were worth every penny, probably one of the best audio guides we have found. Kids had a different narration, obviously, and  a different route to follow. So we went along with them searching for the paintings and listening the adult version of the explanation for each particular masterpiece.

Mark is ready for his art gallery experience.

Again, an illegal picture snapped before Robert was told photography was not allowed.

I cannot believe that all three of our kids did not lose interest in paintings even after an hour of walking around. We walked through many rooms, sorted by period in art history, found most paintings that kids’ guide was pointing out and marked them off on their sheet.

We saw many masterpieces—some familiar to me and some of the ones I had never seen before:

Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”

Mr and Mrs Andrews by Thomas Gainsborough

“The Ambassadors” by Hans Holbein the Younger (Mark’s favorite picture).

“Whistlejacket” by George Stubbs.

The Adoration Of The Kings by Jan Gossaert.

And other number of works by Vermeer, Monet, Rembradt, Rubens, Claude to name a few.

So if you ask me, yes, I recommend the National Gallery for a great place to visit with kids. I would love to spend a few more hours there on my own listening to paintings’ explanations.

As we came out of the gallery, we realized that we’d missed all the rain! Lucky.

We walked over to the Coliseum Theater, our ballet venue, and found our seats---way, way,  way on the very top of the balcony-haha. But the kids did not mind! We could still see everything on stage (you just couldn’t beat the price of the tickets).

Ready for a two hour performance?

A nice videographer from Brazil offered to take a picture of us before the performance. We never pass up an opportunity to have a family picture taken.

And….drumroll….the kids loved it!!! Even Mark sat through the whole first hour without a peep, had snacks during the intermission and got through the second hour without much noise. I LOVED the second part—the one with mostly dancing and beautiful music. I didn’t expect everyone to enjoy the ballet this much, but they did! (Robert did not fall asleep either).

It was five o’clock when we were finished. We were going to walk over to Mother Mash near Regent Street to retrieve Alex’s forgotten hat from our previous visit (we were hoping it was still there). But as we crossed the first street we saw a restaurant called “Chipotle”.  Inside I asked if this place was part of the American chain “Chipotle”, and they said it was! We HAD to eat here. Oh that reminds me, I should write their review on Tripadvisor. Stuff was so nice and accommodating, I don’t see that sort of customer service here often. I later found out they were mostly Spanish, and that probably played a role in their personal bubbly approach. We stuffed ourselves with our stuffed burritos—kids said it was their new favorite place.

Here is Mark telling me, “I would like another quesadilla, please”.

And here is me probably telling him, “Would you like some of my salad, if you are still hungry?”.

Okay. Seriously, I have no idea what we were talking about. I just like candid pictures sometime.

As you can see our day turned out to be a great success with minimal whining and spent money. We even found Alex’s hat (it was his special hat that I brought him from Prague, that’s why we went to great length to find it) and drove peacefully home.

Well, take care for now. I’ve got to go get ready to take a train to London again…this time to pick up our passports with, hopefully Indian visas stamped into them.

Lyana.