We recently went to London for the day and parked in Shepherd's Bush (as we do when we drive in, meaning we could park all day for £12), and before going to see Back to the Future the Musical, we did some very educational sight seeing with our primary school age children.
Our daughter, who is 7 and in year 2 at school, has been learning all about London, specifically the Great Fire of London. An obvious place to visit therefore was The monument to the Great Fire of London, which is really easy to find as Monument tube station brings you out right next to the really massive stone column that was erected in memory of the Great Fire.
When you step out of the station, it's quite surprising how close and absolutely massive the monument is! My daughter had learned all about it at school and seen photos, but up close she was still shocked at how big it was. I didn't realise, having seen the monument before, that you can actually go inside it. So we paid, I think, £9 on the door - £5 for an adult and £4 for a child (which is more than the website advertises so I think it's out of date).
To walk up the 3311 steps to the top of the monument there's a narrow stone staircase, and you do have to pass the people that are coming down as you go up, so it means pressing yourself in against the wall. But it was very doable. Yes, it is tiring on the way up and your legs do feel it the next day, but if you're steady on your feet then you should be fine. There are also large window sills on the way up and kind of alcoves cut into the wall of the monument - as the walls are really, really thick stone - so you can have somewhere to perch if you need a little rest on the way up.
From the top, the views are amazing. It was very misty when we were there, but we could still see Tower Bridge and lots of other famous landmarks. Because we hadn't expected to go up it, I hadn't researched what you could see from the top, so I'd really recommend that you do do that before you go to one of these tall places. It was the same when we went to the Garden at 120; we got to the top and then didn't really know what we were looking at. But If your child has been learning about landmarks in London at school, then it would be good to have a look on Google Maps beforehand, see what you should be able to see from the top, and then look at those things once you're up there.
As we were at the Monument, it was then just a 5 minute walk to Leadenhall Market, which isn't something that's in the National Curriculum, but it is where they filmed Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter films. So as our kids are huge Harry Potter fans, I just wanted them to go there and see the Victorian shopping arcade. They were in the process of setting up a market so the tables were still bare and it wasn't the most exciting place to see but at least they've been to the set of Diagon Alley.
On the walk between the Monument and Leadenhall Market, you go past Sky Garden, but you need to book about 3 weeks in advance so we didn't have tickets.
We headed back to Monument to get the tube to Westminster. When you step out of Westminster, if you follow the signs from inside the station to the Houses of Parliament, you're immediately across the road from Big Ben. I told my kids that the first one who saw Big Ben got a hug and I didn't realise quite how immediate it would be as soon as we stepped into daylight.
From Big Ben we went all the way down to the Victoria Tower Gardens South, that are behind the Houses of Parliament, to see the sculpture of Emmeline Pankhurst, as my 10 year old son who's in year 6, has been learning about the Suffragettes at school. We then crossed the road to have a look at Westminster Abbey, just because we've never seen it before. We didn't go in because there were really long queues.
We were walking to the Strand, to the Adelphi Theater, which was a 20 minute walk from this point, and thought it would be interesting to see more sights than to go back underground. We then noticed Parliament Square Garden, lined with sculptures of famous people, such as Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Millicent Fawcett. On the rest of our walk we saw the Cenotaph, The Royal Horse Guards, and even Downing Street before getting to Trafalgar Square. When we got to Downing Street, we crossed the road and took a photo of the kids by the bollards in front of the fenced off street and pointed out which one was number 10, but they weren't really that interested. On a previous trip we've done Buckingham Palace, so we didn't need to cover that one, but this was just a great opportunity within a couple of hours to see lots of the places that they've been learning about at school, and sculptures of people they've been hearing about.
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