A family day out in the London Bridge Area

We recently went on a family day out in London and apart from the train strikes/delays and the bitterly cold weather (well it is January after all) we had such a wonderful time.
*This is a collaborative blog post. The spending money was gifted by hotels.com but all views are my own*

We don’t live too far from London with us living in Surrey but there is so much of London that we’ve never seen! We’d been to the London Bridge area quite some time ago before we had children so it was really lovely to take the girls and they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. There are some really wonderful hidden gems in London and the following places would be great to visit if you are staying in hotels near the shard or in the surrounding area.

Our daughters Zara and Zayah are 4 and 2 years old and so we wanted to take them somewhere fun and exciting. We decided on Shrek’s Adventure as we’d never been before and we’d recently been watching all of the Shrek films during the Christmas holidays.

We had such a brilliant time and laughed so much throughout the experience.
If you’ve never been before then skip this part as I don’t want to ruin the surprises!

When you first enter the building you are guided round and then you enter a magic bus which has the one and only donkey as the driver! We were given 3D glasses and the bus flew us over the London Eye, over the river Thames and all the way to far far away land.

When we landed we accidentally hit one of rumpelstilskins witches (his girlfriend) and so all of the witches were after us. Then we had to visit different places like the forest where we met cinderella, a fortune teller, then we went to the poison apple pub looking for clues, we ended up in jail at one point and then at the end Shrek broke us out and we were free!

After our visit to Shreks Adventure we walked to London Waterloo station to catch the Jubilee line to London Bridge which is only 2 stops away, and about 5 minutes on the underground. The only annoying thing about travelling in London with little ones is that it can be time consuming as you have to wait for lifts up and down at the stations which can be quite busy.

We met Reubens brother and his girlfriend at London Bridge and we all had lunch together at Honest Burgers on Tooley Street (about a 2 minute walk from London Bridge Station)

Reuben used to work at the branch in Cambridge a few years back and always raved about the food. Our food and drinks were delicious and I also thought the pricing was very fair compared to other restaurants.
We all very much enjoyed our food and would definitely go back there next time we visit London.

Once our bellies were all filled we headed to London Bridge to look at the view before it got dark and it was beautiful. Zayah fell asleep in the pushchair and Zara was absolutely loving life looking over the river Thames. We could see Tower Bridge in the background twinkling away with its blue lights and there were quite a few boats passing by.

I had been looking online whilst planning our trip and was excited to see that they had “Christmas by the River” at the Hays Galleria which is just opposite the station and it was still open until the 5th January! So we had to go to that.

When we entered the Hays Galleria it was SO festive and beautiful. There were statues of “The Snowman” and they had all been painted by different artists. Also possibly the biggest Christmas tree I’ve ever seen in my life.

They have a great selection of shops to browse and also so many stalls selling a variety of different things from scarves to jewellery, ornaments, mulled wine and snacks. The stalls were spread out by the river side and it looked so gorgeous lit up as it got darker outside.

London is just breathtakingly beautiful, especially at night. I love being by the river when you can see all of the twinkling lights and the hustle and bustle of London seems more calm. Looking forward to planning our next visit when the weather is a little warmer.

Thanks for reading and hope you’ve found this helpful if you’re planning a day out or trip to London soon. If you’ve got kids and are on a budget head here for some more tips.

Laura x