City Guide

Among the vehicles on display at the London Transport Museum is the first underground electric train, which had no windows because there was nothing to see underground. The trouble was that no one could tell which stop they were at, a glitch resolved by employing an athletic announcer who ran to each carriage at every station, shouting out the stops. Dating from 1890, this is one of several museum exhibits you can board. The design gallery is a tribute to Frank Pick, the man responsible for rolling out the London Underground brand and giving each line its own character. For children, the London Transport Museum has an under-fives play area decorated with Steven Appleby illustrations and the chance to sit in the driver’s cab of a red bus and guide a Northern Line simulator through tunnels and up to platforms – (truth be told, it’s fun for adults, too).

On this Greenwich Park site you'll find the National Maritime Museum, the Queen's House, which was designed in 1616 by Inigo Jones but not completed until 1638, and the Royal Observatory, founded in 1675 by Charles II. The museum's Maritime London gallery is a permanent exhibition exploring the importance of London's maritime heritage and its impact on world trade. Exhibits include wreckage from a Zeppelin shot down over the Thames estuary in 1916, the original model for Nelson's Column and early 19th-century plans for the Rotherhithe Tunnel. Exhibits in the museum's Your Ocean gallery, which is aimed at families and teenagers, examine current issues affecting marine conservation, including global warming, over-fishing and pollution. The Time Galleries in the Observatory map the quest of astronomers, horologists who attempted to pin down the elusive concept of time. The Cradle of the Navy: The Royal Hospital School at Greenwich is a permanent display in the Queen's House on the school's origins and life at Greenwich, where it occupied the building now used by the museum from 1806 to 1933. The £15 million extension features six astronomy galleries, a science and astronomy education centre, and a working horology centre. The centrepiece of the project, which almost doubles in size the Observatory areas open to the public, is the 120-seat Peter Harrison Planetarium – the only public planetarium in the UK, it features daily shows (admission charge applies), including 'Sky tonight

Kew Gardens is a magnificent World Heritage Site covering 300 acres with over 30,000 species of plants. The Evolution House contains a permanent exhibition telling the story of the development of plant life. A few of the specimens are represented by models but Kew is able to represent many examples of primitive plants from its own living collections. Families with younger children will get a kick out of the human-scale badger sett, the fish in the Marine Display aquarium downstairs in the Palm House and the Climbers and Creepers indoor play area for accompanied three to nine year olds (sessions, bookable on arrival, last 20 mins). The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art is a new, permanent gallery. The Xstrata Treetop Walkway is one of Kew's most impressive attractions: 18m up in the air and 200m long, it provides a fresh perspective on the sweet chestnuts, limes, deciduous oaks and other trees of Capability Brown's woodland. The Treehouse Towers outdoor play area for three to 11 year olds offers rope bridges, giant swings, zip wires and slides geared towards teaching children about trees.