First use of a Premium Merlin pass....... and a microlight cake!

After a lot of research and a lot of waiting for the right time, I bought three Premium Merlin passes this January. I didn't use my Tesco clubcard points as they would have worked out still very expensive and I definitely would not have got 3 x the value. So I waited for the January sales and bought directly from Merlin for £99 each. Thats the premium passes that you can use all year round, no restrictions, free parking and from what I read some fast tracks on the rides at the parks. Not bad, I uploaded photos of the family (Lucy doesn't need one until she is 3) and we received the cards free delivery in the post within 5 days.

Excitedly,  I looked up where we can go, most of the theme parks don't open until March but London is open! So yesterday we decided to take a family trip up to London.
I am NOT impressed with London Underground and the lack of buggy friendly access. There is no way people with disabilities can easily use the service that suppose to be so people friendly! Luckily for us we didn't have too many changes, and of course I had my wonderfully strong husband with us to help with the buggy.

Before we started we checked and there were no metropolitan line trains from Harrow, so we planned to go Chiltern to Marylebone, it only takes 27 minutes. An hour after getting on the train we finally reached Marylebone and carefully had to carry the buggy off the train, as the gap is so big between the train and platform. I wouldn't have been happy doing that by myself!

Anyway, we finally got ourselves to Waterloo and thanks to James picking up and carrying the buggy with Lucy in it up the stairs (he's aching a little bit today!) we were on dry land above ground.
We strolled over to South Bank and the girls were really excited to see the London Eye, but then we spotted the queue. It must have been over 2 hours long, my kids would not want to stand around that long.... what was I going to do??

Some might say i'm an opportunist, we walked along a bit, decided we'd go to the Aquarium first, but then I saw the tiniest queue for the London Eye, the priority queue, I went over and flashed my Merlin passes with a big smile at the lady and inquired if we could go in this queue. "Of Course" she said, "go in!" AWESOME, as Molly shouted out, we queued for about 20 minutes if that, and were straight on the eye. The staff are all very very friendly and helpful. They are smiling and its good to see they at least seem to enjoy their jobs and want their customers to enjoy their experience. Its amazing, its relaxing, fun, of course the best views of London and the girls loved it..

It takes about half an hour, just perfect for seeing all the sights, running around the pod, taking loads of photos and for some, just sitting and relaxing. We came off the ride, easy to maneuver the buggy and children and felt pretty smug at the poor people still queuing!
We took a very short stroll over to the queue for the Aquarium, 2 and a half hours from here" the sign said! Not for the Nobles! Straight to the fast queue, can we go in here please? "Yes but the queue starts over there" I was told, Ok so maybe a half hour wait, we queued up for about 15 minutes, until we crossed the empty space that was the door to the waffle shop (ooooohhhhhh) and then flashed our flashy cards again at the women by the short queue. "No" she said "Not this queue" (my face fell....), "its THIS one!" Well, she pointed to a queue with absolutely NO one in it! we strolled right through and we were at the front. SMUG again, I'm LOVING this! So we walked around the Aquarium. The Sharks were unbelievable and the walkway over them was so amazing, a little scary but truly awesome. Its a fabulous place there, and despite walking quite quickly, we didn't stop to read everything but did look at all the animals we wanted to, it took over an hour to walk around. That's a decent sized Aquarium.  So by the time we came out it was gone 4pm, and starting to get cold.
One truly amazing thing about both the attractions we visited, was that we bought NOTHING in shops on the way out! Miraculous. The guy at the Aquarium did make the best effort to sell us our photo book from inside, but luckily, we pointed out that Lucy had her finger up her nose in every single photo so we got out of a £20 photo book cost.

The only thing we did buy was ice cream. On a day when the outside temperature is about 7 degrees, but with a wind chill making it feel about 3, you can't beat a 99 flake. It was freezing, the kids loved it. The kids sitting next to ours with their ice cream were shivering but wouldn't give up their 99's either. Truly a British sight to see so many kids wrapped up in hats scarves and gloves eating their ice creams!

We made our way back to the tube and somehow managed to get down onto the platform and up to Marylebone.  We were home by about 6pm and the kids were fast asleep by half 7, but sadly, to waste a good evening, I was also asleep just after 8!

As for cake, it was my Mum's partners birthday last week. John is a keen Microlighter, and having now googled so many pictures of microlights, I understand what they are and think he's a bit crazy, but this is the cake I made for him anyway! He was very impressed. A simple BLUE victoria sponge with a fondant/marzipan decoration.