Kidzania - a city just for kids, run by kids

A wind-down day today.  Nothing scheduled, as we were unable to get tickets for the Harry Potter Experience.  Instead we dropped the kids off at Kidzania for 4 hours, where they had a blast.  Julie had a wander around the local Westfield; I read Doctor Who comic books in the local library.
Tonight is our last night in the UK. We are heading to Hampton Court Palace for the day tomorrow, prior to returning the hire car and flying out at 10:30pm. This is the final blog of our UK trip.
I'll leave the day's report to the boys ...

Oliver

Hi, Oliver here. Today we went to a detailed city called,- Kidzania!!! It was lots of fun, and us boys enjoyed it very much. This whole city was controlled, and run by kids from ages 4- 14, and was a very friendly environment.

So, you are all probably wondering what it was like,- well it was was an experience not worth missing. When I arrived in this "kid city", I was shocked at how big it was. In fact, it was as big as WestMAC's whole junior school, except, this city had two floors! It was pretty big for a city being run by kids.

Anyway, when I entered the city, the first thing I had to do, was to get a job. Hmmm. I decided I was going to be a pilot of a plane. They actually executed the plan quite well. When I walked in to the plane, the first thing I could see was a big simulator. I sat down in the pilot's chair, I could see a TV screen that was on, so it looked like I was flying a plane. I was very good at controlling it. Landing was not so good though. I got paid for my job and then got back to the kid city.

My next job was being a money vault sorter. My job was to deliver money to other kid buildings. It was funny though, because when I was doing this, I got pick-pocketed by 5- year olds, and I had nothing to give the aged 12 kids - HaHa! The rest of the day was mainly doing jobs and earning money,- and then spending it. It was a good end to our holiday. I miss the UK already.

Ben

Today was a very exiting day with lots of fun. We went to Kidzania at 12:30 pm. But before we went to Kidzania we had a meal so we did not end up using money (pounds) at Kidzania. What I had was a chicken and bacon pie. 

After the FOOD we went in the city. It was really fun. When we walked in we got fifty KidZos (Kidzanian money) to spend at activities. My first job was to be a paramedic for the blazing hotel (paramedic). 

After that I was a police man stopping people crossing the police line. While I was a police man I was chanting "WE ARE THE POLICE WE ARE HERE TO KEEP THE BEAT" (police). Then I was a hotel roomkeeper (HOUSE KEEPING!!!). Then I was a police officer with Oli. Then I was a Firefighter putting out the blaze in the building (FIRE!!!). That's all.

  

With boarding passes to enter Kidzania Border Security.

One of the many streets in Kidzania.

Rich, I tells ya!

Fire crew driving (_very_ slowly) to a "fire" ...

... followed by the paramedics.

Put that fire out!  Injured manikins were taken back to the Health Centre for treatment.

Health Centre.  The whole process was great.  Julie and I went AWOL for a few hours (the boys were old enough to fly solo), but could wander around for 15min or so trying to find the boys at the end of their allocated time.  Other parents could pay a discounted entry fee as act as customers at the shops, clinics, cafes, tour groups, plane passengers, etc.

Busy couriers running supplies to the different shops.

Paramedics return to base.

Window washing.  The highest paying job in Kidzania.  This pair were working like Trojans.

The maintenance techs need to crawl inside the air-con ducts to find and patch up some holes.

Ben managed to snaffle the remnants of Oli's money.  Ben wasn't interested in buying any of the tat in the shops with his Kidzos, so figured he'd keep it as a souvenir.  Thankfully he wasn't pulled up at Border Security for currency smuggling.

The Globe & Tate Modern

We took church at Westminster Abbey this morning then headed to Shakespeare's Globe for a tour.

Westminster Abbey

Shakespeare's Globe was founded by the actor and director Sam Wanamaker, built about 230 metres from the site of the original theatre and opened in 1997 after a bit of back and forth with the local council who weren't overly excited about approving the building of the replica theatre. The site also includes the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, an indoor theatre. This is a smaller, candle-lit space based on the indoor playhouses of Jacobean London. Unfortunately it was being set up for a production, but going by images we viewed of the interior, it looks absolutely stunning. In Shakespeare's time the building would not have had the external oak beams on view, but all involved in the project agreed that it looked too beautiful to hide away under paint. It is the only thatch roof in London since the great fire, and as such there are sprinkler heads across the peak of the roof line and it is lined with fire retardant. It really is a gorgeous space.

Timeline of events in England and when Shakespeare's works were written

Model of the theatre - a great deal of research and archaeology went into learning what the theatre looked like to inform this build

Costumes made in the way they would have been fashioned in Shakespeare's time (no zips, buttons etc)

Samples of velvet from the 1500s

Musical instruments of the time

Inside the theatre - lots of beautiful oak everywhere

The stage set for a modernised production of Much Ado About Nothing (this version set in Mexico!)

Benefactors' flagstones - 2 flagstones for Michael Palin and John Cleese - they tossed a coin to see who would get the larger stone, with the loser paying for both stones. John Cleese paid for both, but suggested to the theatre that for 300 pounds more they should spell Michael Palin's name incorrectly! They did!

There was a good deal of negative blood between council and Wanamaker's project team early on.

Props

We then headed across to the Tate Modern for a wander around. It was good to have a discussion with the boys that it is "okay to not understand art" and that as long as it causes them to think and question its a good thing. Believe me, there was plenty in there that we did not understand, but caused us to question. It was a really enjoyable experience exposing the boys to modern art. 

Composition III - with Red, Blue and Yellow (Piet Mondrian) - have always loved the simplicity of this piece

Using light to create art by passing it through a perspex disc - Yellow versus Purple (Olafur Eliasson) 

Radios of all different types and vintages stacked up emitting noise - kind of how my head feels after a day of teaching
Babel (Cildo Meireles)

Cannot find the name of this piece now, but the treads represent events that shape us. The threads at the beginning are the same threads at the end, but they are knotted, separated, joined and developed in many ways from top to bottom.

The wibbly wobbly bridge (The Millennium Bridge) we walked across heading to find Julie a nice glass of gin

Gin found and consumed!

Greenwich

Spent the day at Greenwich today. Visited a couple of museums, starting with The National Maritime Museum. I particularly enjoyed the figurehead collection and the exhibition room about trade routes and the East India Company.

We headed out to the Queen's House. This land this home was built on was given to Queen Anne by King James by way of apology for speaking harshly to her in public. She had just shot his dog - apparently by accident - but her wall-sized painting made her seem to be the kind of gal who doesn't take kindly to being spoken down to publicly. So I imagine after a bit of sulking and giving James the cold shoulder, he bought her out of her mood with land.
Some great portraits in the house by the way.

It was then a very short stroll to the Greenwich Observatory. This was great fun and really interesting.

We finished the day with a walk through Greenwich Markets.

Bennie on a perch - and those are new pants!

All lies!  It was at least 3 blocks west of the Prime Meridian.

Interesting note: the Prime Meridian changed depending who the Astronomer Royal was.  The building behind housed the main observatories.  As the equipment got larger, new extensions were built, and the Meridian used shifted.  The Prime Meridian here became the default for the world in the 1880s because the Astronomer Royal at the time (Airy) had been in the position for 50 years at that time, so the UK had had a long duration of using the same default longitude.

Another interesting note:  The Ordinance Survey, the national mapping agency for the UK, still uses an older Prime Meridian about 10 metres to the west of here, as all the maps and land titles were initially defined in the 1750s.  GPS uses a Prime Meridian about 100m east of here because "the earth is lumpy" or something like that.

Power boat from the 1930's, which held the water speed record (about 165 km/hr) for a time.

Figurehead for the HMS Benedict.

Rescue boats, with solid cork bow and stern filling.  The boats were self-righting if they flipped in rough seas.

Gridlock on the Thames in the Age of Sail.

One exhibition hall looked at the British East India Company, and their interactions with China and India.  

What happens if you tell a company, "You can't have a monopoly on trade with China, or a monopoly on trade with India, but you _can_ have a monopoly on any taxes you raise from territories you control."  Not long after this, the attempt to make government a profit-making venture led to the Indian Rebellion and, ultimately, the British Government shutting the Company down.

Chinese court case against 4 British sailors accused of killing a Chinese during a riot.  On the left are 4 leading British traders, on the right, 4 leading Chinese traders.  1 found guilty and hanged, 3 found innocent.

The teeny, tiny Admiral's uniform that Nelson died in.  I swear Ben would have fit snugly in it.

_That_ painting, that most Australians would be familiar with.  Up close, Cook's face and hands were very detailed, but the uniform was quite abstract.  You can't really see it at a distance.

The first attempt at painting a kangaroo, based on verbal descriptions, notes, and a pelt.  It looks like a rodent.

The discount Prime Meridian, marked on a pavement about 500m north of the Royal Observatory.  Don't have to pay to get in!

The Royal Observatory, up on top of a hill looking over London.

People standing in a line to stand on a line.

Ben being coached in how to use a spectrometer.

Part of a display on the development of more accurate timepieces, thus allowing determination of longitude at sea.  The man who solved the problem, John Harrison, developed a portable clock accurate to 1/3rd of a second each day, enough to win the prize (and to determine longitude to within 2km on a trans-Atlantic voyage - good enough).  Later, I believed he would be able to build a timepiece accurate to 1/100th of a second each day (ie. it would lose 3 seconds each year), but died before building a prototype.  His notes were later discovered, and in the 1970's this Burgess Clock was made to Harrison's specifications, and it was as accurate as had been predicted.

The timepiece that changed the world: a portable timepiece that could reliably keep time to within 1/3rd of a second per day. 

The Observatory would drop the ball at 1pm each day, so captains in the Thames could synchronise their timepieces before setting off overseas.

The device defining the Meridian in the 1750s (and thus all the Ordinance Survey coordinates through to the present day).

About 5.9999th Century BC
Thales thinks a bit more and says, 'Nope.'

Jellied eels!  Tastes better than it sounds ... but not by much.