Amaris & Family Explore The Postal Museum London
We started our last day in England at the The Postal Museum London. It’s not one that you hear much about, but I thought it was brilliant! We started with a ride on the Mail Rail which used to be trains specifically for moving mail around central London. The trains were designed for mail and not people so it was cramped. As you ride the rail you stop along the way and videos take up the whole side of a tunnel wall and you learn about the history of these trains. It was a very interesting presentation! The train ride is about ten minutes long and then you come back where you started. Once you exit the train, there is a small museum which further expands on what we learned. There are lots of interactive exhibits. There are some that teach you how to operate the trains and others that demonstrate how mail was sorted. My son's favorite was the mail sorting! It was an exhibit to demonstrate the traveling sorters. You enter the carriage and you have a wall of mail slots. There are several letters at the bottom and when you place the first one in a slot a timer starts. You then have to sort all of the mail into the slots before the timer is up. Since it is a traveling sorter, the floor is also shaking back and forth to simulate moving in a vehicle.
After the Mail Rail, we went across the street to the second building of the The Postal Museum London. Here there is a museum and small cafe. In my opinion, this part was less exciting; however, there were the bank tubes where you could send messages back and forth from opposites ends of the museum. My son and several children at the museum spent most of the time here sending tubes back and forth. My son was also given a little booklet that included a scavenger hunt. He was excited when he saw the Peppa Pig stamp!
The last area to see is Sorted! The Postal Play Space which is within The Postal Museum London. This is a play space for children 8 and under and it requires a reservation and an extra ticket. Your ticket gives your 45-minutes of play here. It is a HUGE hit for young children. The space includes a mini-town with houses and postal boxes. There are packages and envelopes everywhere and the children move them around in the town. My son found every letter he could find and stuffed one particular mailbox with everything. Later, he found the mail sorting area which was an even bigger hit. You take the mail upstairs and can move the letters along a conveyor belt that sorts the mail into shoots. The shoots then bring the parcels and letters downstairs into the mail room. In the mail room, there is a scanner to scan each piece of mail and then sort it. It was a super cute space!
After the The Postal Museum London, we headed across town to Hyde Park. Here we found the Diana Memorial Playground. This playground was very crowded, but had a lot of room for everything. My son loved it here as well. When he was finished playing, we grabbed some ice cream from the cafe in the park. My son had a 99 which is vanilla soft-serve ice cream with a Cadbury Flake stuck into it. I had ice cream that tasted similar to gelato. I got the most English sounding flavor…strawberry and clotted cream. It was good!
We finished the evening with my cousin and his wife. The original plan was to take a train north near where they live, but the train is on strike which really limited our options. We instead took the London Underground to the end of the line and they met us here. The end of the Piccadilly Line is a place called Cockfosters and is a place where my dad used to work. It was an hour ride and because so many trains were closed, it was packed almost the whole way. Not quite as packed as the day my son and I went on the train in rush hour, but still very busy. We had a nice meal at Middeys Brasserie which was mostly chosen for its proximity to the tube station. It turned out to be very good. We finished the evening at The Cock Inn which used to be a pub my dad frequented. Cockfosters has changed a lot since he was here! It used to be relatively rural, but now it’s a relatively busy-posh area.
About the Author
Amaris is the owner of the Ohio-based travel agency, Adventures by Amaris. Her love for travel began at a young age when she traveled to her parents' home countries of England and Mexico. She continued traveling in High School by participating in a People to People program to Italy, France and Monaco. In college, she spent six weeks in Europe studying abroad and traveling. She visited Spain, Portugal, England, Wales, Ireland, Vatican City, and Italy in a whirlwind summer. Through her adult life she continues to make traveling a priority with her family. Her young son is autistic so navigating the world of traveling with an autistic child brings on new adventures. Her travel resume includes Mexico, Turks & Caicos, Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Panama, Costa Rica, Haiti, Jamaica, Colombia, and Cayman Islands. She is an expert in planning family vacations across the world from Disney World to Europe to worldwide cruises.
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