In my last post, Meeting Miriam, I talked about spending family time with Mushroom and Mr B that afternoon. Wondering what we did? Well…
Once we’d had lunch (with Mushroom sitting in the awesome ‘clip-on’ highhair at Wagamama), we wondered along the South Bank, pointing and boats and checking out the street art and entertainment.
Mr B helps Mushroom work out which doorbells will ring in this art installation.
I had noticed a big photo of Dennis the Menace earlier so we decided to go and see what that was all about.
Well, we discovered ‘Beanotown,’ an exhibition celebrating 75 years of the UK’s favourite comic. The Beano was early reading material for me and I thought the characters would appeal to Mushroom so we headed down ‘Bash Street’ to find out what it was all about.
While Mr B wandered around looking at the old comics and some of the Beano memoribilia (which included customised DMs and a guitar at which Mushroom kept shouting ‘I want it!’ as he banged on the glass case!), Mushroom ran ahead to say hello to Gnasher.
He got upset when Gnasher came out of his kennel (with my helping hands) and ran up some steps to hide. Here he discovered a room where he could draw on the walls! He was hesitant at first but soon got creative…
After a while we heard music coming from the ‘Creative Masterclass’ room so we went to investigate and found a party going on. Kids of all ages (up to about 10 on that day) were playing party games and dancing to music provided by an online radio station. Mushroom loved the dancing and gave the ‘Gangnam style’ dance competition his best shot, copying the moves from the older boy who eventually won.
All of this excitement was topped off with a smarties ice-cream (how do you get the smarties out at the end? Anyone?) on the way home. We had no idea what we were going to do when Mr B met us and were toying with the idea of the Aquarium or the London Eye, both of which had hideous queues. We ended up having a great time at this completely free event, and I highly recommend it for both big and little kids!
Beanotown is part of the Southbank Centre’s Festival of Neighbourhood series. It’s free and runs until 8 September. It’s open from 11am to 7pm.
Disclosure: This is not a paid review, just my thoughts on a great day out that you might enjoy! Read my full PR and disclosure policy here.
This sounds like a great day out! I’d love you to share it on my weekly Family Days Linky on Mums do travel 🙂
Thanks for the invite! I’ve added it now, and commented on this week’s linky 🙂