Discovering Southwark

Discovering Southwark

On a sunny and hot Saturday, we thought we’ll discover Southwark and invited Laksha’s penpal, Ameira too. We started the ‘tour’ with a nice hearty lunch at the diverse Borough Market. Kids were thrilled and sometimes not so thrilled at what they saw (Kangaroo burgers, live lobsters,etc...). We did have a hard time picking what we wanted to eat since there was so many choices! 

After having a wandering around taking in the sights and smell of Borough market, we headed down for some pirate training on the Golden Hind begins the market. Again, very affordable and parents got to join in to! It was just our kids and us parents which made it even more special! We got to dress up first as pirates and train in sword fighting! Who knew there were so many defence and attack skills! Our pirate trainer was funny, patient and very good at teaching us all those important skills! Once we finished learning about fighting like a pirate, we had to train ourselves on the cannonball guns! Again, lots to take in but the training was very comprehensive and each of us had a very important job. We then had a practise run to make sure we all knew our roles and the actual loading of the gun was timed! With lots of teamwork and communication, we loaded a cannonball gun in just 35secs! Woohoo! Of course, after all that hard work, we were starving. We then had a snack and a drink (provided for) while learning to sing pirate songs! What great fun! Before we knew it, the hour has flown by! The kids and parents had a real insight into how to be a real pirate, we even got certificates to prove! Mahi could now proudly say he is an official pirate and be Jack Sparrow 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 we still stayed on as the kids wanted to play hide and seek and extra lore the boat while we mums relaxed in the deck! Golden Hind has lots of events going on and I would highly recommend them!

After a hard hour of being a pirate, in another 2 minutes walk away was the Clink Museum. Laksha loves history therefore what better place to visit Britain’s oldest museum? Mahi was utterly scared (since the London Bridge experience, that child has been traumatised) but after forcing him and him finding out there was nothing scary, he also enjoyed it! He even had the important job of doing the rat hunt to get us a prize! The museum itself was rich in history and very child friendly. I learned so much and after 17 years in the country, learning England’s history though Laksha’s eyes and it was fascinating. There were weapons and other equipments that were used in the older times for us to try too! It was mostly about religious prisoners hence a great insight into the division of Christianity in old England. The museum tour took us about 40minutes and the kids wanted it to be longer. There was so much to learn and see though. Again, very affordable and will be enjoyed by W everyone. Thanks to Mahi, we also had our surprise (lollipops) for the rat hunt!

We then had a nice stroll alongside the south bank and came across The Globe,m who have exciting events for kids in July, the OXO tower who had a free exhibition in Windrush going on, the book market and the food market just behind Southbank centre.

We were so exhausted by the end of the day but we’ve done some great exploring!