Family Friendly London #7 SeaLife Aquarium for £10.50 Each, Plus London Eye Review

On our latest visit to London, Smix asked could we visit the Aquarium. The huge SeaLife aquarium is located opposite parliament, just over the bridge beside the Shrek Adventure attraction and The London Eye.

Never pay full price for tickets! There are kids go free offers on Cadbury packs, and 2 for 1 deals online, but I found the absolute cheapest way to do it. Kellogg's have an adults go free offer, which you can get even on cereal bar packs in the Pound Shop. So with it you just pay the £21 price for a kid's ticket, and the adult ticket (£26) is free.

You can pre-buy a ticket online, but you have to choose a 15 minute time slot to arrive at. As we didn't know what time our train would get in from the airport, I decided to just buy our tickets when we showed up.

The website had warned there can be a long queue, but this was a busy Tuesday afternoon in August and we just had to queue for 15 minutes to pay and go in. We just presented our voucher cut out of the Kellogg's box on arrival.

To see exactly how it works and read the list of all the attractions over the whole UK that the voucher can be used with, visit the Kellogg's deal site.  It also works for the Shrek Adventure which is beside the aquarium, and locally, Carrickfergus Castle.

The London SeaLife Aquarium itself is really just like a bigger version of our Portaferry Aquarium. It's just that on a bigger scale, and takes longer to walk round. 

There are dozens of viewing tanks, more fish and species, but I'm glad we didn't pay more than £10.50 each because we had seen most of it all before. The only difference was it had a crocodile, and a pretty cool jellyfish exhibition. I liked the piranhas best.

Right beside the Aquarium is one of London's newest but best known attractions, The London Eye. 

The giant Ferris wheel gives 360 views of the city as far as the eye can see. We went on it on Smix's first visit to London in Easter 2016. We both loved it. 

It can be pricy, but if you have a valid rail ticket for the day you can get a 2 for 1 London Eye discount voucher. Simply print it at home before you travel.

The ride lasts about 45 minutes, and is well worth the price. If you are cautious of heights don't worry, the pods are enclosed and solid, no wobbling, and quite large and spacious. There is a place to sit in the centre of each, and iPads with facts about the views you can see as you rise and fall. 

I've heard that the view at night is something special, and might make a return visit to the London Eye on another trip to see the city at night. 

Asda's Kitschest Cakes- From Giant Custard Creams to Dessert Burger & Fries

Asda are probably have the best value party cakes of all the supermarkets, and definitely the most inventive!

We had the cute Gnorman the Gnome cake back at the start of the summer, for a birthday. This week Asda sent us the huge, indulgent Chocolate Drip Cake to share for Sunday lunch. 

It's the novelty cakes that I love, and for pug admirers there's a whole range of pug cakes. There's the full size Pabs and Paloma celebration party sized cakes, plus pug cupcakes and a small gift cake which serves six. 

The coolest cakes are the oversized biscuits and 'shaped like other food' designs. The massive Custard Cream is uber realistic, as is the Jammie Dodger. The Donut Cake looks like a Simpson's offering and the giant Rainbow Jazzie is positively mouth watering.

Theres also an oversized Ice Cream Sundae Cake, and Burger and Fries!

A clever little offering I haven't seen anywhere else before is Asda's Afternoon Tea packs. They've profiteroles, cream doughnuts and custard slices, all in a little box for £3 each.

There are two varieties, Cream Tea and Summer Selection. 

The prettiest cake in all the land has to be the Piñata Cake. A rainbow Wonder filled with a surprise in the centre. There are matching mini pinata cupcakes which also spill forth sweetie treasure. 

The Smash Cake is similar, with hidden bounty inside its dome. There's also a giant pink cupcake, and a strawberry ombré version of the drip cake. 

Lastly, watch out for the Asda Extra Special desserts, for posh after dinner delights. 

Family Friendly London #6 - Ripley's Believe It Or Not- Tickets for just £11.50

Ripley's Believe It or Not museums are my spiritual home. I've been to one in Florida, one in LA, another native offering of the Blackpool museum, and visited the Piccadilly one for the second time last Easter. It's a church of Kitsch.

Ripley's Believe It Or Not London is right on Piccadilly Circus.  It takes over the corner of a huge building and it's .hard to miss

Ripley's is home to the weird and wonderful. Stories of amazing and unusual people. Crazy natural phenomenon recorded for the ages. Bizarre artwork, images made from toast or jelly beans. Tales of great feats, wacky achievements, world record breaking acts. 

It really is right up my street, including strange taxidermy. 

If you love the weird and wonderful, it's definitely worth a visit. You'll spend a good 90 mins winding your way through the many floors and galleries, even if you don't read about every exhibit.  

Kids will love the museum more than perhaps a 'boring grown up' art gallery. There are exhibits you can interact with and play with along your journey, as well as top class photo opportunities. And unlike many London attractions you can take your own photos as you please; you don't have to pay £15 at the end to get a nice picture.

There are a couple of ways to avoid paying full price for your Ripley's ticket. The first is a 2 for 1 deal via Days Out Guide. To claim you just need a valid train ticket for that day. That site is well worth bookmarking as they have handfuls of similar deals for London attractions, discounts on restaurants etc.

This site has a similar good deal for tickets at only £11.50 each, rather than the £27.99 price quoted online for an adult ticket.

So it's really up to what's cheapest on the day. If you walk straight into Ripley's you can check the current ticket price, and see which deal is going to be best for you.  The latter deal doesn't even require printing, you can show them it on your phone to get the £11.50 tickets.

It really is worth paying for if you're like me and just love weird stuff. I think my most excited moment was seeing the 'blue & black or white & gold' dress, the internet famous frock right before my eyes. Now that's culture.

Retro Ulsterbus and Vintage Travel Advertising Spotted at the Ulster Transport Museum

I think everyone in this neck of the woods has been to the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum at Cultra, just outside Holywood, but for non-NI-natives and tourists it's well worth visiting. We went along today especially to see the Flight part, but dandered through the other galleries we had seen before because the giant locomotives and engines are always impressive.

There are half a dozen galleries, including the absolutely HUGE train hanger. As well as the actual trains there is a wealth of reading exhibits and model dotted around each pavilion. 

New since our last visit are the massive five or six story high photos at either end of the train hanger.  One end shows a vintage station (I forgot to check which, if it was Central or Great Victoria Street) with signs for trains for Bangor, and interestingly Castlewellan.

The end below shows Portrush Train Station in its heyday.

We had a cuppa in the cute tea rooms, then walked down to the flight part of the museum.

They had a mini version of the tearoom down there in the separate building for planes, carts and cars.

The flight part is quite small, and hasn't really been updated in years and years. If you are Aviation mad like Smix it may be worth a trip from Belfast, but honestly if you only like planes be aware it's a very small part of the museum. 

The YouTube daredevil pranker idiots of the 1920s

Whilst Smix loved the aircraft section, I loved all the vintage photos of Northern Ireland, and the old fashioned advertising. 

Bonus snaps-

1. facts about the world's worst poet who was from Larne. Sounds about right. 

2. the derp-iest looking plane ever. Smix was able to tell me all about it. It's used to Transport bits of planes to different parts of the world. I think if I ever saw this at the airport I would die laughing.

Family Friendly London #5 Guide to Cheap London Theatre Tickets- Including Kids Go Absolutely Free!

For our summer London trip this year we really wanted to go to the theatre. We've been to the Grand Opera House in Belfast quite often, but never a big show in the west end. 

There are several options to bag tickets for less than up front price, so let's have a look at them. 

We booked through  LastMinute.com and picked restricted view seats for The Garrick's production of Gangsta Granny. Check theatre layouts on TheatreMonkey.com as some seats, like the ones we picked, aren't too bad. We just had to lean forward a bit when the action moved to one side of the stage, but it saved us £10 a seat each compared to the people beside us.

Another option to look into is Kids Week. Every year theatres release a bunch of kids go free tickets, which you can buy through the Kids Week website. Pay for an adult ticket and get a child's seat free. It's also more than a week so the name is misleading, so if you are visiting during the summer at all, be sure to check that website for the shows you might want to see.

Lastly, you can always try the TKTS booth in Leicester Square. It may have half price seats for the show you want. Be careful about any other booths, as they may not be official and may not be accurate about offering you the best price.

Happy ticket hunting. 

The Puzzling French Colour-by-numbers Books That Are Fulfilling in Any Language

I'm rather particular about the type of colouring book I like. They have to be colour by numbers, and be a picture where you don't know what you are colouring until you start to shade the shapes and the image appears.

I like the Colour Quest books, but whilst browsing Amazon I also found these French books, which obviously don't require translation to enjoy.​

I bought the pair of Vice Versa books, where the page is a mass of swirls with one bold image you initially can see, which is a clue to the finished coloured piece you are filling in. 

The publisher also has a massive range of Disney mystery colouring books, with Stars Wars, Manga and architecture filling other books. 

I love the look of this one book especially, where you colour a smeared image which will appear when you put a reflective glass in the centre.

Let me know if you buy any of the Disney books, and let me see your creations! 

For 11 More Hours Only- Get 35 Free Tiny Me Personalised Name Stickers for School- Just Pay Postage!

Quick little offer which ends in 11 hours. 35 free personalised stickers, just pay £3 postage.  I featured TinyMe back in 2014. Their personalised party invitations are super cool. £3 for postage for some stickers may be a little steep, but what I'm going to do is think of it as I'm getting the stickers for £3 and postage free, while I buy some other bits for the year ahead.

They've personalised lunch boxes, P.E. bags, wall stickers, all sorts. Below you can see the labels I got for Smix one year. The circular ones are for inside shoes, and come with a special protective covering so they don't rub off.

There are dozens of themes for the stickers too, so you can choose fairies, woodland, Transport, dinosaurs, whatever your own child is into. Offer is UK only, and only the next 11 hours, so be quick! 

Dapper Foxes, Sassy T-Rexes & Majestic Unicorns- Asda Duvets (For Adults!) Do It Again

Asda have the best duvet covers. They corner a much neglected market- novelty duvets for double beds and larger. Their fun duvet covers come in all sizes, from single to king, and start at £10 with doubl sizes usually around £12.

Their autumn 2017 range does not disappoint, with heritage animals, sassy dinosaurs, wizarding cats, mermaids and more. 

Sets have matching cushions and soft fleece throws which are priced £5 or £6.