Car selfie

We arrived in Kensington well ahead of our designated time slot so that we could have a look around the main museum a bit first, and also so that we could be assured a parking space in a nearby street. Parking can be extortionate in central London, but on Sundays the unthinkable happens and you can find street parking that’s free

With our exhibition tickets we were able to avoid queuing for the museum itself (it was pretty busy) and go straight in. We’ve been before so we revisited favourite displays and then went outside to the temporary tropical butterfly house, which contained butterflies from Africa, Asia and South America.

We were immediately surrounded by butterflies when we entered, which saw the girls literally squealing in delight. They were there in huge numbers and in all sorts of colours.

We were all fascinated by the different butterfly species we were seeing and the staff were great at answering our questions. The children were off the scale excited when the butterflies landed on us, especially when one landed ‘on mummy’s bum’.  They also loved stamping their cards, which charted the lifecycle of a butterfly. The younger two just love sticking and stamping anything, but my eldest, at six years old, was actually taking in the information at each stamping station.

The girls were taken by all the exotic colours and how close they could get, but my husband and I were absolutely amazed by the rows and rows of dangling chrysalises in a specially made frame behind glass. They were beautiful and rather eerie at the same time. We actually saw a butterfly emerge whilst standing watching. Absolutely fascinating.

Lucky enough to see a butterfly emerge

The butterflies get ‘drunk’ on rotting fruit

The girls were really reluctant to leave, but we tempted them away with the promise of lunch at the restaurant in the museum’s Green Zone. All three are still talking about seeing the butterflies. Find out more about Sensational Butterflies.

We were provided with a Samsung Galaxy S6 for the day so that I could record and share the experience with readers of the blog. The butterflies were a great subject to try out the handset’s 16 megapixel camera. I’m no David Bailey, but it was very easy to get great photos, especially with the pro function. Inspired by what she was seeing, my eldest, who is very snap happy, disappeared off for 10 minutes and clicked away. I didn’t show her how to use it, she just figured it out and took some lovely photos, so the phone’s pretty intuitive. It has a longer battery life than other phones I’ve used, so great for a day out where you want to capture a lot. It also boasts wireless charging capabilities. When I got back home I played about with the camera functions and found some great features and effects. Pop art anyone…?

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