Friday Family Day

Last Friday Rob took off work to enjoy a full family day, so I planned not one, not two, but three activities to do together! It was such a nice day and we all loved going around London and exploring new parts we hadn't seen before. 

First, we went to the London Transport Museum, an absolute gem for kids. The museum is housed in a beautiful building (I want to say Victorian!?) in the heart of Covent Garden. The moment you enter you see how special this place is and you are captivated by everything that is going on there, from old horse carriages, busses, trains moving everywhere, wax figurines dressed up in costumes from the 19th century to the sixties and more. We had a peek inside the steam underground, went up to the old double decks and had a go at driving taxis and busses! 

We had a lot of fun and it was tough to convince Emilia that it was time to go. Thankfully, we had more fun on the agenda for the day. So we headed to Coram's Fields, a nice playground close to Russel Square with picnic areas, designated play areas for toddlers and older children, and a little farm. When we got there we first had a picnic lunch and then off we went to play hard! 

Again, it wasn't easy to take Emilia away from all this fun but we promised her to go somewhere even nicer! So we headed to the nearby Charles Dickens' house museum. The museum is a lovely Georgian terraced house in Bloomsbury and is full of authentic furniture, paintings, rare books and memorabilia that belonged to the writer and his family. At the entrance Emilia was given a paper reproduction of the house with all the rooms and she had lots of fun matching the paper pictures with the real rooms. She loved walking around the house, she admired the furniture, the curtains, the fireplaces (one fireplace for each room!) and she really liked meeting the hedgehog in the kitchen - she said hello and bye to him! I thought it was a very cute museum and while I loved wandering around the house to see how they used to live back then, I particularly found the walk in the small back garden very relaxing. 

From there we walked all the way back home, Emilia fell asleep in her stroller, tired but happy! I wish we could enjoy more family days like this during the week! 

Local Strolls and Playgrounds

One thing Emilia and I have been doing a lot since I stopped working is wandering around our beautiful neighboroughood and visiting all the playgrounds in the area. It is official, Emilia loves slides! The weather has been quite nice, mostly sunny, although still a little bit chilly. Here are some recent pictures.

A Day in King's Road

When Ilaria saw the pictures of our Little Artist's Afternoon Tea at the Gallery Mess of Saatchi Gallery a few weeks ago, she immediately asked me to book for when they were in town. So, on Monday afternoon we headed west to King's Road. While Ilaria and family visited the museum, Emilia and I wandered around the beautiful side streets of King's Road and then we all met to enjoy our afternoon tea. Emilia recognised the place as soon as we got in and asked for a babyccino straight away! The children had so much fun and it was beautiful to see them play together! 

Diana Memorial Playground

Spring is still playing hard to get around here, however, we don't let the weather stop us and a couple of weeks ago we took Emilia to the Diana Memorial Playground in Kensington Gardens. The fact that it wasn't sunny and warm played to our advantage and surprisingly the playground was not full. We were prepared to queue for an hour or so while in fact we got there, opened the gate, et voila' inside we were! 

Emilia was in haven. She particularly loved the big pirate ship and she could have played with the sand all day long. She kept saying that she wanted to be at the beach! Can't wait to take her to the actual beach this Summer, she is going to have so much fun! 

Home activities

When mum and grandmum were in London, Emilia got to spend a lot of time inside the flat doing the things she loves the most: crafting, colouring, painting, baking and making pizza! Here are some pictures that capture some of the best moments these three ladies had together.

They had a lot of fun. And one day, Rob and I got home from work to find these lovely portraits that Emilia had made for us. Aren't they super cute?!

Carnevale

On Tuesday we celebrated Carnevale. If we were in Italy, we would have no doubt gone to a dress-up party and we would have seen many little ones going around, dressed in their favourite heroes or Disney characters. Here in the UK, however, they don't celebrate Carnevale, so it was much quiter. What's Carnevale for us, it's Pancake Day for them and we tried to combine the two celebrations.

It was a gorgeous sunny day in London so we got ready and went out for a nice stroll. Emilia decided to be a ballerina for a day and was wearing a lovely tutu dress together with her Frozen magic wand. We made colourful masks and baked lots of traditional biscuits that we enjoyed for dessert together with lovely pancakes made by Rob. All in all it was a very "sweet" day!