The Fitzwilliam is world famous, and for good reason!…read moreLocated in central Cambridge, it is a gem of museums! Founded, supported and supplied with antiquities by staff and Alimni, it offers an extra nice look at the beat of Britain's "Collection craze".

This is an amazing 2 story museum with all kinds of artifacts from old wedgewood to Egypt's tomb…read moreand artifacts Teapots and tea cups old coins to everything in between. 2 nd floor loads of paintings to look at. Entry is free which is always a plus.

Awesome place. Came for the Battle of Britain airshow from across the pond. Loved the site, all of…read morethe food and drink options and the museums were incredible. It was great to see how they are working to preserve these aircraft after nearly a century. Thank you!

What a great experiential aircraft visit in a historically significant place. The displays span the…read morecentury including spitfires, P-51's, B-52's, A-10's, SR-71, U2, and commercial aircraft like the SST. Two major display building with several hangars of planes WW2 operational planes or in process of being restored. For you yanks, this on the quality of the Smithsonian Aircraft exhibit in DC, with out all the outer space stuff.

An interesting hour spent studying all sorts of scientific instruments from Babbage's difference…read moreengine, hand held calculators and a cool section of hands on experiments and instruments for kids.

This place is fantastic for people of all ages and it's free which is even better. Did you know…read morethat the nursery rhymes humpty dumpty and twinkle twinkle little star are both from Colchester? Well you can find out why and much more at this museum - well worth a visit

A free museum and somewhere worth visiting. Not only are there lots of interesting artifacts but…read morethere are things the children and adults can play around with whilst learning about the local history.

Beautiful property that even the Queen visits some times during her travels in the UK. I did not…read morehave time to see the inside of the property unfortunately, however the outside is beautiful and it has amazing gardens. They even have a train going around one of the gardens for children. It is open longer hours in the summer and you can spend 2-3 hours here.

This is a fantastic day out for young kids, my 1 year old and 3 year old loved it. Audley House…read moreitself and the grounds are spectacular, and there is a car park right next to the train station. Tickets for the trains are very reasonably priced, and the trains go roughly every 20 mins. The 1.5 mile trip is great, the engines are wonderfully maintained and there are lots of teddy bears dotted around the wood that the kids love pointing out. Crucially you need to check the opening times before planning a trip here. For the 2012 season the railway was only open at the weekends and school holidays, and even then only from 12 noon to 4.45pm (with the last steam train departure at 4pm). It's also the sort of venue that suits decent weather. The train carriages are covered, however there is also a large open 'Picnic and Play' area beside the terminal that has great play equipment, but would be much less pleasant in rainy weather. Other nice touches are the cafe and the guided Fairy Walk that kids can take through the woods. Overall a fantastic afternoon, just make sure to check the timetable and weather forecast.

Big! Giant! Huge Collection! I think that describes this museum. Be prepared to spend at least half…read moreday here. For fast pace like me, it takes us 3 hours. This museum need reservations ahead of time. It is free to public. The museum is popular, if you try to get in at the day arrive, you have to hope not many reserve the ticket. The museum has a lot room with different regions in the world. Many of the collection even the host country doesn't have it. The Egypt collection includes the many types of mummies. This collection not even the Egypt has it. The entrance basically enter to the round section that connected to the different room. You may need a good leg to walk entire museum. They also have folding chairs that you can use and portable to open at the display.

It's not every museum that has a line wrapped around the building when it opens on a Monday…read moremorning. But the British Museum is the world's oldest public national museum, has the largest collection of artifacts of any museum in the world, and is the second most visited attraction in all of the United Kingdom. The museum is free to visit, but we reserved a timed entry ticket for when they opened on Monday morning. I suggest you do this, because people who had tickets were walking right through into the museum after a bag check, while people who had not bought tickets ahead of time were having to wait in another line to get in. The museum is so large and has so many artifacts, that it can be a little overwhelming. For that reason, we relied on the list of highlights of the museum to point us to certain artifacts we didn't want to miss: the Rosetta Stone; the colossal bust of Ramesses II (c. 1250 BC); Hoa Hakananai'a (basalt statue from Easter Island); the Ife head (Nigeria, ca. 1300-1400s); the Sutton Hoo ship burial (dating back to 7th century Britain); the Lewish Chessmen (Scottish, ca. 1150-1175); and more. Prepare for crowds and to be a little overwhelmed by people and artifacts and the size of the museum. If you want to see everything, be prepared to spend an entire in the museum. Since it's free, you can do as we did and just spend a couple of hours - that's all we had - and see what you can see (the highlights list helped)! But it's a great museum and easily one of the most important museums in the country.

The House On The Hill Toy Museum is the nuts! If you've got a penchant for all things retro in the…read moretoy department, you will be in heaven in this place. Depending on which way you look at it, and what your interests are, entry to the museum is either a free bonus when going to Stansted Mountfitchett Castle (see my other review!), or the Castle is an interesting diversion once you've been to the Museum. Either way, as you walk up the hill to get there you are greeted by signs on your left showing some of the stuff you're about to see and interesting facts about the museum (like the one that informs you it's the largest toy museum in the world and is 250 feet above sea level). On the right is the 'dinosaur encounter' - there are some pretty big models of dinosaurs and some sound effects as you go up, the kids love it as they are almost hiding in the surrounding grass. On entry you realise that history is just as important to the museum as the toys themselves, as they are complemented by some excellent nostalgia-inducing items. On this occasion I walked straight in to a full size robin reliant bedecked in Trotters Brothers livery and a cabinet with all kinds of signed merchandise and books etc for both Only Fools and Horses and Dad's Army. Peppered throughout the museum are also pieces of WWII aeroplanes that were brought down around Herts and Essex. Couple that with the soon encountered display of WWII artefacts (some very rare) and you get a sense of the passion for history that the owners have. But, what we're all there for is the toys. You will slowly make your way around saying things like, 'Wow! I used to have one of those! and nudging your reluctant visiting partner and saying, Woah, do you remember those?!. Toy after toy after toy will leave you with equal doses of wonderous joy and sad, departed regret, but all will hold your fascination for some time. There are toys from every single generation on display here, so it really is a place for the whole family, and each display has a fact card with some interesting little nuggets to read about the exhibits. Highlights are: The largest single collection (I believe) of Action Men and accessories, including some very rare stuff. A huge collection of Star Wars toys and memorabilia, Barbie/Cindy, Meccano, Britain's figures, TV Tie-Ins such as the A-Team and the Smurfs, Board Games through the ages, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and a section with some arcade games - new and old. You can buy Old Pennies to use on some of the machines there too which is a nice touch. There are also Lego stations dotted around on one floor to keep the kids amused while you peruse all of the corner-of-the-eye-tear-inducing objects surrounding you. There are nods to the music industry too, with some interesting little trinkets to look at. It doesn't feel that big in the cubic metre sense in here, but with most of the cases being crammed full of stuff it's irrelevant - you will be there for a long time if you really want to appreciate all that you can see. Kids just love looking at all the stuff, adults even more so. This is a pretty well hidden little gem of a place, and if you're in the area, it's a must see. As a final note, car parking in the immediate vicinity is limited to a council-run public car park, so take some change with you (it was £2.00 for 6 hours so not hideously expensive, but needed if you're going to the castle too). There are other parking places but they are a walk away. Also, at the time of writing, admission to the museum is included with your ticket to the castle, and is priced at £8.50 for adults and £6.50 for children.

This is a lovely museum. It is full of fossils and alike…read more They run lots of events for children. They are also Very child friendly and dont mind excited children. Its also free.

The collection holds many geological samples collected by Charles Darwin on his voyage of the…read moreBeagle. Quite a few display cases hold personal effects such as equipment and notebooks from the voyage. As for the rest of the museum's collection, most of the rock samples are from the UK, but the most special for me were the Burgess Shale pieces; here the visitor can get a very close view which is a problem at other museums.

We were in London during a heat wave and decided a museum day was in order, to entertain our…read morechildren away from the scorching sun. We settled on the Natural History Museum, and by the time we realized it would provide but faint relief, it was too late to go somewhere else. The Natural History Museum is one of London's spectacular free museums, a beautiful building on Exhibition Road in South Kensington. We were not, apparently, the only family who decided to visit on this hot Thursday afternoon in July, and we ended up waiting in a long, slow line, completely exposed to the sun. They might have put up some umbrellas, but I guess the weather was atypical. Once we were in, we learned that the museum is an old, historic building without much in the way of air conditioning. It was crowded and steamy in there, though still preferable to being outside. There were also a few newer exhibition halls that had proper AC. Thankfully, my three-year-old has a lifelong fascination with fans, and there were dozens of these on display, giant machines designed to ventilate large spaces. He was, in fact, more into these than he was into the dinosaurs, which scared the bejeezus out of him. The museum was definitely top tier, with tons of interesting exhibits to entertain both children and adults. We entered right into Hintze Hall, where a full blue whale skeleton hung suspended over our heads. We also admired a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite, dating back to the beginning of our solar system. The dinosaur hall was excellent, even if the animatronic T-rex made my little boy cry. We fell prey to one of the photo op stops, and I definitely paid for the downloads like a sucker--what, was I not gonna own the silly green screen pictures of my family among dinosaurs, and more importantly, looking at a camera at the same time? The mammal hall was cool, though I have to say, I missed the grand diorama displays of the mammal halls I've seen back home. We went into a newer exhibit on how to fix our broken planet, mostly for the air conditioning. My kids were less into the conservation stuff than the dinosaurs and fans, but I thought it was quite well done. I actually stopped buying beef treats for my dog as a result of one of the placards, which talked about the impact on the planet of using beef for pet food. We went to two gift shops, the one by the dinosaur hall and the main one near the entrance, and both were quite nice, with lots to look at for our kids. We allowed them to buy stuffies, and our three-year-old bought a tiny dodo and a tiny ankylosaurus (on theme, good job), while our six-year-old bought a flamingo to add to his flamingo collection. If there was a flamingo display at the museum, we missed it, though I suppose I wouldn't be surprised. I can tell by looking at the map now that we missed plenty. We spent a little time in the cafe, for fans and beverages, and I realized as we were leaving that I'd left my sunglasses there over an hour earlier. I was pleasantly surprised to find it at the register waiting for me. We take the kids to natural history museums at home, and I have no doubt we'd make good use of this one if we were raising them nearby. It's a wonderful place, expansive and educational, a truly amazing free resource to anyone spending time in London.

Lots of bones! Plenty of old stuff! Great turn-of-the-century over-the-top ornate architecture!…read morePlan on an hour unless you're hardcore. Ride the escalator into the middle of the earth to find out what music is playing inside. See extraordinary taxidermy handiwork. Even see a fake dodo bird thought to be an adjacent species that didn't exist. And if you like dinosaurs this is your Mecca. Just don't dare sit anywhere like on some stairs in the corner or some overzealous guard will kick you right out. But otherwise you'll have a great time. Also enjoy the outside grounds for a stroll, and hit up the West entrance for zero lines while the hoards line up on the other side.

Really interesting museum, nice cafe, real cockpit from a Jaguar fighter to get into. great day out.read more