Orli, Just Breathe : Mammoths exhibition

To celebrate Father's Day, and not at all because it was cold and damp, we decided to take the kids to the Natural History Museum to see their new Mammoths exhibition.
Truth be told I am not a huge fan of the Natural History Museum. I am purely an arts person, so stick me in any old "regular" museum and I am happy, but all these dead animals and weird plants and facts about nature? Not my cup of tea.
Add to that that Yon is not an easy child to take to a museum, and that Ron (like me) is not a huge animal-life fan.
And let's not forget the 100 pound rule - I found that whenever you leave the house in London it costs a hundred pounds. How when the museum is free? Well, first of all though the museum is free the exhibition itself costs money (26 pounds for a family) with the mandatory gift (I know it's not mandatory and yet somehow we couldn't resist the sitting mammoth) which ended up costing about 30 pounds and lunch (another 30 or so) and transport - and that is how you get to the magic number.

But it was Father's day, and we are on a "enjoy life" quest, and it looked like a great exhibition from the video. So we figured - why not?

It might seem like something you do spontaneously, but around here outings are never spontaneous - tickets have to be bought in advance (especially since we've seen the queue to the dinosaur exhibition last year), routes have to be planned (how do you get from the tube to the museum), food has to be prepared (never leave home without a snack, and make sure you know were your lunch is going to be), anticipate every problem you can (did you notice that museums are so very dark?) and always leave the house with some extra time to allow for whining and slow walkers.
So after so much preparation and thinking, it really shouldn't come as a shock that -
Of course the kids were misbehaving from the moment they woke up.
Of course we discovered Ron still has homework he was supposed to have finished during the week.
Of course we were late for our time slot. But just by two minutes.
Of course the app advised to go to the wrong tube station, which incidentally was also closed.
Of course Yon went into hyper-mode because of all the things he could touch.
Of course there was an emergency somewhere in the museum.
Of course the Pret we chose for lunch was packed with people.
And of course I came home with a headache, Hidai got a mammoth for Father's Day and the kids concluded it a success.

And it really was a success.
I love the fact that the museums here are so child-friendly, and most of the exhibition was of things you could actually touch. For Yon it was like heaven. Ron enjoyed the huge amount of written materials, movies, and demonstrations carefully arranged around the room.
There were plenty of places to stop and sit around the room (unlike in the London Aquarium) so we could take some much needed regrouping breaks.
It wasn't too big - we were there for about an hour and a half including breaks, snacks and the gift shop. Really the perfect amount of time.
Though it really was dark inside (I honestly never noticed how dark museums are before Yon) it didn't feel so bad, and even Yon didn't get into distress.
The exhibition itself is really good. My photos are less so, mainly because there was a "no-flash" policy to which we adhered.

There was a sign "please touch" everywhere, which Yon really enjoyed reading

A sabre tooth cat (or Diego for those who saw Ice Age)

Yon took about 50 photos on my phone in the first 10 minutes we were there, before he discovered the "please touch" sign. 2 were in focus. None made the cut.