In London you are spoilt for choice for museums and art galleries, so I’ve picked out some of my favourite must sees. It’s good to seek out a well placed hotel like The Montcalm London Marble Arch so that you are well located for all your museum visits.

A trip to London would not be complete without a visit to the National Gallery.  It’s an outstanding museum with a huge selection of wonderful art that features just about all the great names of art and you can trace the development of European art picture by picture.  There are so many highlights to pick out, it’s almost impossible.  For me though the stand out pictures include the many Titians, especially the vibrantly coloured Bacchus and Ariadne and the more subdued, but moving Diana and Actaeon.  For earlier art enthusiasts there’s the jewel like  Wilton Diptych which is a masterpiece of its age.  Later favourites include Stubbs’ sublime Whistlejacket, which forcefully brings the great horse to life and an iconic Sunflowers painting by Van Gogh.  As the gallery is free to visit, you can easily pop in for half an hour to see your favourites or look for inspiration.

Whilst you are in the area, it’s worth popping around the corner to the National Portrait Gallery. The Gallery holds the most extensive collection of portraits in the world.  It’s spans the ages with images of medieval royalty, through the Tudor dynasty, right up until the present day. Again this museum is free to visit so you can just go for a quick visit if you have a small amount time available.

A fabulous smaller art collection to visit is the Wallace Collection.  Despite its smaller size it still packs a punch in terms of the range of its exhibits and the quality.  The Wallace Collection displays the works of art collected in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the first four Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the son of the 4th Marquess. It was bequeathed to the British nation by Sir Richard’s widow, Lady Wallace, in 1897.  As all the pieces come from one private collection there is a coherence about it and a more domestic scale than a larger gallery.  The highlight for me is Franz Hals’ sumptuous Laughing Cavalier, but there’s also a charming portrait by Rembrandt of his son and a number of Murillos.

Another must see on the museums list is the British Museum.  There is so much to see here and you could easily spend the whole day here as the collection is vast.  I find the Rosetta Stone fascinating and the marbles from the Parthenon in Athenes are unmissable.  There’s also an Easter Island statue and more from ancient civilisations like the Assryian Lion Hunt reliefs and Tang Dynasty figures. It’s not all from far flung parts of the world and one of my personal highlights are the Isle of Lewis chessmen, which is probably the most famous chess set in the world.  I also love the Portland Vase which proved to be be Wedgewood’s inspiration.

There was a lot of excitement from H when we heard there was going to be a LEGOLAND® Discovery Centre in Birmingham. We’d made the journey up to Manchester a couple of times and had a lot of fun there. H was keen to see how the LEGOLAND® Discovery Centre Birmingham compared to the Manchester one.  Would it be the same or would there be different things?  Find out how we got on and read our full review below.  Our party included 2 adults, 2 11-year-olds (nearly 12) and a 9-year-old.  I did wonder if at nearly 12 the boys would be too old for it, but I could not have been more wrong.

As you enter the centre you get the opportunity to go on the Kingdom Quest laser ride, which is a favourite for us.  You can fit 5 into a car (3 in front and 2 behind), which was perfect for our party. A captured Princess needs your help so you need to zap all the beastly trolls and sneaky skeletons with your special laser gun to rescue her. We loved this ride because you can all take part and each individual’s score is logged on their own screen.  There’s a bit of friendly rivalry that goes on and you can easily go back on again later for a rematch.  This ride is a lot of fun and it’s certainly one of the highlights for us.

We spent quite a lot of time in MINILAND as there was so much to do and look at.  I felt quite proud of how many lovely buildings Birmingham actually had to copy, some of them old and some of them new.  There were a few sporting venues from outside the city centre including the Edgbaston cricket ground that H has been to for Twenty20 matches, plus Villa Park that he’s been to for a football match too.  Both the cricket ground and the football ground are quite interactive too, in fact Villa Park works a bit like a game of table football and you can try to score a goal.

Once we made it through to the main open space for the LEGOLAND® Discovery Centre Birmingham we found ourselves in a bright and colourful space with the cafe area at the heart of things and various areas around it.  The adults made a beeline for the cafe to sit down and rest, but the boys were immediately off to build cars and race them.  I am not joking when I say that they spent about 2 hours doing this. They were trying to build the car that went fastest and were keen to race their cars against those of other children and the timer clock.  So much fun!

There are plenty more things to do though.  There’s the 4D cinema which is well worth a visit.  The movies are shown in rotation and they last about 20-30 minutes each.  There are various areas to build things including a Duplo area and a Lego Friends one.  There’s soft play and the Merlin’s Apprentice Ride.  In fact, we didn’t get around to trying out everything, so we will certainly be back to take in some more Lego fun.

After we came out we had to spend a lot of time in the shop as there was so much to see in there too.  Depending on your child’s interest in Lego, you could easily spend a whole day in LEGOLAND® Discovery Centre Birmingham, but half a day would be a lot of fun too.

So what about the questions we had at the start about the LEGOLAND® Discovery Centre Birmingham? Would it be the same or would there be different things?  The answer in fact is that it’s very similar, but also different too.  It’s a bit smaller it’s true, but I felt they’d made better use of the space available and it did seem to flow better.  We felt MINILAND was better in Birmingham, even discounting that it was more fun because we knew the buildings as it seemed more interactive.  The cafe feels more central in Birmingham and it was very easy to sit at a table and keep an eye out for the boys whereas that wasn’t so easy in Manchester.  But, best of all for us it’s in our home city which makes it an easy journey.  It’s easier to get to for anyone visiting by train too as it’s very walkable from the train station.

In addition to the main attraction activities and rides, from Saturday 9th February, LEGOLAND® Discovery Centre Birmingham will be opening the doors to a new installation and series of themed activities – which will run for a limited time to celebrate the launch of Lego Movie 2. With out-of-this-world experiences, you’ll be able to say hello to movie characters Emmet and Wyldstyle, make your own escape vehicles and race them against others down a zip line in one of the new creative build challenges PLUS recreate your favourite film scenes against a green screen with your very own minifigure creations!

Disclosure: We were given free entry to enable us to check out LEGOLAND® Discovery Centre Birmingham.

This year Birmingham Botanical Gardens have teamed up with Xtra Humongous to create their Halloween event: Dr Nerium’s Garden of Ghouls.  We are regulars at the gardens as we are members, but obviously our visits normally take place during daylight, so it was strange to be in the gardens at night.  In some ways it’s easy for the garden to feel a bit spooky at night as there are always strange noises and our senses are heightened in the dark.   From Friday 26th October until Sunday 4th November 2018 Dr Nerium’s Garden of Ghouls is open for those that want to take a scaremaze trail around the gardens.

We were invited to the preview night and got to encounter Dr.Nerium (on the left) and his ghouls before we set out on our walk around the scaremaze.  The background story is that in the early nineteenth century, Dr. Nerium started carrying out experiments  that led to the creation of some weird, wonderful and unique creatures.  It all started when he brought back his first carnivorous flowers from the base of the Peruvian Andes.  Attempts at cross breeding with other findings led to fantastical creatures that can only be described as unique.  It’s these creatures that you encounter as you walk around the grounds.

It’s very atmospheric and the actors are well rehearsed – we particularly liked the one of the witches and a ‘zombie’ that had a lot to say to us.  The costumes and the props are great and really help bring the experience to life.  I did find the story a bit hard to follow at times, but it’s easy to treat it as a series of tableaus and still get a lot of enjoyment out of it.  We attended the more scary session which starts at 7pm.  Essentially before that it’s the same experience, but the actors have a bit more leeway later to add to the intensity of the experience. H is 11 and we took his friend who is 12 with us and both boys enjoyed the event and didn’t get more than pleasantly scared.   I think it’s best to judge based on your knowledge of your child and how they react to scary things when making a decision about whether to go and which session to pick.

Our evening was very entertaining and H said he enjoyed it and would recommend it, so Dr.Nerium’s Garden of Ghouls got a rather hard to obtain pre-teen seal of approval.  I would happily go again and would enjoy going with adult friends too.  From today (Friday 28th October) there will be an entertainment area to go to if you make it out of the scaremaze or you can hedge your bets and wander around before you go in.  There will be street food traders, bars, performers, music and circus themed entertainment.