Dinosaur Tea Time in London
Updated: 11 hours ago
London weather in March is….well, nicer generally than Wisconsin’s, but not peak for outdoor activities, so you need to have a few fun indoor ideas in your back pocket. London has no shortage! If there’s a dinosaur lover in your travel group consider a visit to the Natural History Museum followed by a dinosaur themed English tea.
Admission to the museum is free but you can pre-book an entry time online. We did not prebook and strangely the prebook line was really long but we walked right in to the east entrance on Exhibit Road with no queue at all. The east entrance starts off with a bang as you immediately come face-to-face with Sophie the Stegosaurus, the most complete steggy ever discovered!
An escalator takes you from Earth hall to the Earth Sciences area. You can see it in the background of the photo below.
We made our way through halls of birds, mammals, and, my daughter’s favorite, gemstones! Hope, an enormous blue whale skeleton watched over us in the grand Hintze Hall.
Thunderous roars echoed from the hall with the animatronic T-Rex. Apparently they dress this mean looking fella up in a Christmas sweater (“jumper” in real English) every year (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/world/europe/t-rex-christmas-jumper-natural-history-museum.html.
Winding our way we saw the first ever plesiosaur fossil, which was actually found by a woman (Mary Anning) and the Attenborosaurus. Before long we were bumping up against our two-hour museum threshold so made our way outside to the gardens which hosts Fern, a life-size bronze diplodocus and ancient fossils. Then it was time to eat!
About a five minute walk from the museum, the Ampersand Hotel (https://ampersandhotel.com/eat-drink/the-drawing-rooms/science-afternoon-tea/ hosts a dinosaur-themed traditional British tea. For this, special occasion we had made a reservation. We stepped from the rainy London streets into the cozy lobby. The cafe is down the stairs to the left of the desk.
The host seated us next to the absolutely cutest middle aged couple dressed all in Jurassic World gear. They were so sweet and you could tell they were just meant for each other. They smiled and offered to take a family picture.
There is an adult and a child option for tea, each serves two. We ordered one of each. The kids tea comes with warm milk that you melt chocolate into. It has dinosaur footprint shaped sandwiches and mini hotdogs, scones and sweets.
The adult version traded out hotdogs for sandwiches and offers different sweets. Both come with Jurassic volcanic “smoke”.
Grownups get a choice of tea. I had the excellent house blend .
Londoners in trench coats marched past the windows armed with sturdy umbrellas as the rain picked up outside. In no rush, we savored every bite. The cafe filled up with a family celebrating a child’s birthday and a reunion of ex-pat friends.
My kids, who at times hurry through meals, comfortably settled in as we laughed and recounted out favorite museum exhibit. By the time we left the rain had passed and the sun began pushing through the clouds. My dinosaur fans were well pleased!
