Country Life: Norwich Castle Museum and school holidays at the Park.

I only realised after I'd taken about 10 photos with my cellphone, that you aren't supposed to take photos inside the Norwich Castle Museum without first asking permission - no wonder I kept getting funny looks from some of the young female tour guides who were wandering around the place!

Anyway the kids and I had a lovely morning out - it was well worth going to the Castle and you need a couple of visits to take it all in. I was lank impressed because the bus stops literally across the road from the museum entrance. We took the Simonds bus in, these buses are always so nice and clean, comfy and the drivers are polite and helpful. We got to the Castle five minutes before opening time and it was BITTERLY cold, thank god we had wrapped up warmly before we left the house but we were still freezing and had to huddle alongside the huge old Norman arched wooden doorway before they opened up at spot on 1000am.

For those that keep a check on these things I paid £10.90 for us all three to go in (I don't think they charged me for Ewan). The Museum is split into three levels - we went up a large flight of stairs to check out the Castle Keep and Balcony, this was quite cool.

Picture taken when we left, blue sky and sunny!

King & Queen sitting on the throne

Ewan wasn't too keen on the Natural history section with all the stuffed animals, birds, reptiles and insects, in fact he was downright 'cary'. I also thought it was a bit gross and so Victorian ... I prefer my wild things running around. We hot footed it outta there and went into the Egypt room (again, the kids aren't keen on Mummies and there is a well preserved exhibit, grinning black-lipped teeth and all)

The Magical things special exhibition, was very cute, with different themes from fantasty stories and movies - like Harry Potter, the Lion, Witch & the Wardrobe, Cinderella etc. etc. They kids dressed up and played with many of the interactive exhibits, it was a lot of fun for them.

I was impressed with the Boudica/Roman exhibits and the Anglo Saxon/Viking one, I would have liked to have spent more time in there and might go back again on my own some day. There are also enormous China teapots on display all over the place in perspex cases - really huge things that you could fit a person in! The Coleman Art galleries are very special but I couldn't spend any time in there with the kids really and any case, my feet were starting to get rather sore and I had a rumbly in my tumbly. We also didn't go into the dungeons/prison area, not enough time really.

We had lunch in the cafe there (I got them each a sausage roll and a juice and some enormous chocolate chip cookies for later). Then we went back to the bus stop to go home. Well that was the plan. But Ewan had to make a trip to the little boys room, so we ran back inside to the loos, past all the queueing people (there were loads of people coming in as we were leaving). Toilet break over, we went back to the bus stop and waited about five minutes for the No. 36 Purple line bus back to Long Stratton.

I got Faye some rocks from the Museum shop - is this girl going to be a Geologist? And Ewan a Knight hood, to wear with his armour and shield that he made yesterday.