Kids in London - Canary Wharf

Canary Wharf is one of my alternative London shopping locations and it also makes a pleasant change for drinks and dinner with friends when you fancy some time out from the West End or the City. But it is also a great place to take the kids for the day...

On Saturday, we took the Jubilee Line out to Canary Wharf to enjoy the sunshine whilst surrounded by lots of cooling water. Don't forget that the tube stations here - with their huge escalators - are exciting to small people!

We had learned from the Canary Wharf events web site that there was a charity abseil near Canada Square and that is where we were headed. After a pleasant walk around Canada Square with the obligatory splashing in the fountain we found the brave abseilers - around 90 planned to do the drop on Saturday and a similar number the next day. Luckily, we managed to get a riverside outside table at the All Bar One which meant that we could sip our Pimms (the kids had Cokes) while watching the abseiling action and admiring the sunshine waterside view. Bliss.

Then we did a little shopping to cool off in the air conditioning. It seems that they have added even more shops! And there were so many already. We dallied a little while in John Lewis and admired a few shoe, shirt and bag shops for good measure before returning to ground level and the sunshine again.

Then we wandered through Jubliee Park where there were more fountains to admire - and some goldfish/koi in one of the ponds. There were also some interesting brick art sculptures which the kids liked as the bricks were tiny (fairy sized!)...At the end of Jubilee Park we crossed the road and spent a while looking across the water at the latest construction project - huge cranes and diggers a good balance to the earlier fairy sized art works.

Finally we decided to take the DLR back to central London. Whilst we found the signs frustratingly confusing, the staff were really helpful and reminded us that there was no interchange at Bank. So we rode to Westferry and changed to get to Tower Gateway. The view from the almost driverless trains from up above the water delighted our youngsters...the simple things in life...

Anyway. It was a lovely day thanks to the sunshine in a kind of modern day Toytown Venice...the kids loved it and so did we. And if you don't do lots of shopping (which would be hard to resist) it wouldn't cost much either...