Welsand's in London

Story Time at the National Portrait Gallery

The National Portrait Gallery has a monthly story telling event for children. We thought it was a great idea to view the gallery in the morning, have a little lunch at the cafe, and let Sophie enjoy the story.

The National Portrait Gallery is often overlooked since it is next door to the National Gallery which is enormous! The Portrait Gallery has fantastic portraits of Britain's kings, queens, poets, musicians, artists, thinkers, heroes, villains from all periods since the late 14th century. Our favorite gallery was the Tudor Gallery, which included an important portrait of Queen Elizabeth I (we just watched the film on her last weekend). It is a beautiful portrait of her.

After a quick lunch in the Gallery cafe, we attended the story time session. Sophie was completely mesmerized by the storyteller. She sat on her little cushion in the gallery and did not even look behind to see if mum and dad were there (this is a big thing for us, Sophie can be quite shy and tied to our hips). The story was about a metal worker, which tied into using the escalator to get up into the gallery. She also got to bang some silver egg cups together, and search out the sculpture in the gallery. It was fantastic and very well done. We hope to make it to future sessions.

Next, we walked through all of London it seemed...well maybe just Leicester Square to Picadilly Circus, to Regent's Street, to Oxford Street and finally home on the tube. In between we did quite a bit of window shopping, purchased a few gifts, got great ideas of the shops that were in the area, took a bit of time to enjoy the green space in the Soho Square, and enjoyed a nice spring day while Sophie slept peacefully...Ahhh!

posted by Chris @ 2:02 PM