My eldest was about to start learning about this in history so in the half term a friend and I took our eldest on a walking tour of the Great Fire of London - well any excuse for a trip to the big smoke!
We started at the Monument of the Great Fire of London built by Sir Christopher Wren. You can walk up this, so we got there first thing to avoid big queues. We didn't have to wait long before we started our ascent. There are 311 steps to climb and felt like a bit of a workout but it was worth it to get the views from the top, a 360 degree view of London. The boys got a certificate for climbing which was a nice touch.
After this we crossed over to Pudding Lane as the starting point to the fire. There is only a small plaque there to commemorate. Incidentally the monument is 6.15 metres high which is the same distance from its location to the start of the fire on pudding lane.
We then took a short walk St Pauls Cathedral also built by Sir Christopher Wren and where is resting place is. If you go into the Crypt you can see his tombstone and also the resting place of Horacio Nelson and other big names. The cathedral is beautiful and we sat and listened to the choir for a bit, and lit a candle for some loved ones that were in our thoughts.
After this we had worked up a bit of an appetite and our 7 year olds love Chinese food so only one destination for that - Chinatown! We ate in a favourite of mine, Plum Valley Restaurant and got lots of dim sum and Crispy Duck - a real treat.
After our feast we then traversed over to the Museum of London to see the Great Fire of London Exhibition. It is interactive and really enables you to understand the scale of the disaster. There is a short video that gives a day by day account of what happened and that is a good place to start as it brings all the museum pieces that you will see after that to life.
Getting dark, we head back to the train station with a Coffee and Hot Chocolates and walk over Waterloo Bridge, we take in the Thames views at night time with two very happy 7 year olds.
