School holidays - time for a trip to the museum

When living in London we would almost always go to one of the big museums in the school holidays so this week seemed the right time for our first visit to the National Museum here. The kids were a bit sceptical - I think more because they fancied an afternoon of computer games rather than any criticism of African cultural and heritage displays. But we all had a lovely time.

We started at the snake pit. Jamie had clearly done his research - those hours of Steve Backshall's deadly 60 viewing and card collecting have rubbed off. He was able to identify all the snakes and had all sorts of fascinating (and slightly scary) facts about them, particularly how venomous they were. He helpfully explained that the only way to tell the difference between the harmless grass snake and the 98% fatal black mamba (which turns out to be grey/green and named after the colour of its tongue) is when the latter opens its mouth and attacks you. Apparently grass snakes don't do that. We all agreed that this wasn't a great differentiator and it wouldn't be the best time to find out either.

After the excitement of the snake park the main museums's story of the evolution of man through fossils discovered in Kenya, including 1.5 million year old humanoid skeleton Turkana boy didn't quite capture the kids' imaginations. But I learnt a lot and we all enjoyed looking at the various tribal artefacts and display of African mammals. A local artist was also having an exhibition so we got a dose of culture too. I suspect this museum will become as regular a feature of our school holidays as our trips to South Ken.
Anne