Bach to Baby at Buckingham Palace

If you haven't yet tried a Bach to Baby concert for yourself, then we would highly recommend that you do, especially if you have a highly inquisitive or musically-minded child that needs to be allowed to run around while they learn.

We've found our own toddlers love the relaxed atmosphere in which to try new tastes in music, discover different instruments and see how they're played at a highly skilled level.

So when the opportunity came round to attend a Bach to Baby harp concert at none other than the Buckingham Palace, we made sure to grab tickets!

As well as attending the concert itself, there was also the opportunity to explore many of the state rooms in the Palace itself, before wandering over to the concert to enjoy a variety of classical pieces on the harp, as well as Bach to Baby's signature round of favourite nursery rhymes.

As an added bonus, the visitor pass also permits you to return to the Palace as many times as you like within a year, so if you're a frequent visitor to London it's well worth the money. We are big fans of passes like these, because with toddlers you often don't have enough time to fully enjoy a venue or attraction before someone has a meltdown, needs a wee or decides they're suddenly so hungry they couldn't possibly walk another single step. Knowing that you can leave and come back another day for no additional cost (apart from travel) makes it easier to decide that the best thing is to just go home!

The day itself

So it sounds like a great trip, but it ended up being quite an adventure for several reasons. My mum came with me for this trip, we live near a train station (within walking distance) and that can get us to London in 1 hour 40 mins. This means a train journey up to London is perfectly feasible and we use this option about once a month (its expensive for an adult train ticket but if you have a free museum at the end and take food it helps keep costs to a minimum)

Now we'd booked these tickets about 2 months in advance so we didn't have any idea it was going to be 33 degrees in London and the middle of a heat wave. But  stubbornness runs in our family and we were committed to trying, so we set off, bag packed with spare clothes, lunch, drinks, snacks, a blanket for the 4 month old to lie on the table, and the portable fold-up potty. If you've read any of my posts before you'll know I am not a fan of pushchairs so we usually embark on these adventures without one. If I have a spare set of hands I will carry baby but otherwise I take a sling for him.

I should probably have clocked that things weren't going to go well when the 3-year-old had finished his and everyone else's lunch on the train by 10:30 a.m, the carriage's air conditioning had failed and the two-year-old decided that she was going to potty train, on the train, in a train with a reduced toilet service. After traipsing hopelessly up and down the train with the two-year-old screaming and refusing to do a wee in the perfectly good nappy she was wearing, I resorted to crawling under the table we were sitting at to build a makeshift camp for the potty. Finally she could do a wee.

And this is how I ended up carrying a box of wee around Buckingham Palace.

We had twenty minutes from arriving at Victoria Station until the end of our allocated arrival time at the Palace, so you can imagine we arrived at the gates already rather sweaty and disheveled. Even more so than our usual slightly feral appearance as a family. Add to this the fact that the supposedly water tight potty is now filled with so much wee it's started to leak if I try and carry it by its handle, so have resorted to carrying it pizza-box style in one hand with baby in the other. It's exactly what you imagine yourself doing when you first think about having children.

Once finally through the first ticket check we thought we were finally in but no, there is now a second check - an airport-esque security set up - to pass through. And of course, my full-to-bursting change bag triggers the scanners, because I had forgotten about the disassembled components of the two-year-old's broken bicycle bell. This I had been carrying in a zip pocket of the bag for the last ten months with  every intention to fix but no time or energy to do so, and it only dawned on me now, wee-in-hand, that it probably resembled the components of a small IED. So I can completely understand the need to check the bag but it was somewhat less than ideal.

Once this hurdle was clear we thought great, we're in, let's find the toilets. But no, you had to go round the entire one way tour (that takes approximately 1 hour 40 mins, or so we were told) until you exit into the Gardens and can find the toilets. The two-year-old is less than impressed and so we ask one of the assistants if we can make a quick exit and bypass the tour. Meanwhile another assistant, who clearly moonlighted as part of the shoe police, passed us while muttering 'no shoes, no shoes'. Our children love to walk barefoot, and bare-skinned, if at all possible, and the former we are very happy to indulge if at all possible. There is no sign that says 'shoes must be worn in Buckingham Palace' but maybe there will be next time.

At this point the three-year-old commences a full-blown meltdown as he has decided he is fully committed to seeing the entirety of the Palace. So mum takes the two-year-old and my phone (oops) into the gardens, while I embark on the tour with the three-year-old, baby and the potty-of-pee. If you just walk the tour route quickly you can get round in about 15 mins (as we quickly found out) and there is a huge amount to see (so will definitely be worth repeat visits). The tour itself was so quick for us (screaming baby, leaking potty) I don't think I could pull out much of note, other than the other beautifully air-conditioned ballroom with places to sit down. But we will be reading about the Palace and the displays in advance of the next visit so we have some key things to look out for. We also didn't get the audio tour as we were too frazzled to properly engage at this time, if we go again I will update this and let you know.

Having finally made it out of the Palace we located the toilets and I was finally able to unload the bucket of wee. By this point however, I am flush out of snacks and we still have an hour until the concert. Luckily just outside the air conditioned room there is an ice cream vendor. The two-year-old wants chocolate as usual while the three-year-old is going rogue and weighing up strawberry or vanilla for a painfully long time. As the sweat trickles down my back and the people behind start to shuffle their feet I give up and opt to buy him a double scoop with both. £13 later I am angrily eating the remains of a strawberry ice cream (the only flavour I don't like myself) as I refuse to let that much ice cream go to waste when he announces he can't eat anymore as he doesn't like strawberry (today).

The concert itself was fine, not the best Bach to baby we have been to but still enjoyable and more importantly conducted in an air conditioned room. As it was a one-off and unlikely to happen again, I thought it wouldn't be much use to you all to go into any more detail. If you're interested in Bach to Baby we will share another post about the concerts we have been to, all of which have been absolutely great.

When we're ready to leave, and desperate to get home out of the heat, we find its a half-mile walk through the gardens to the exit. En-route to Victoria station the baby and two-year-old both decide to fall asleep, so as we pick our way back my mum looks like she's carrying a corpse, I'm carrying two bags while walking backwards to keep baby out of the sun, and I'm watching the three-year-old aimlessly zig zagging across the pavement next to a busy main road as he's 'too hot to listen to mummy'. Needless to say I was relieved that the train was on time and the journey home went without any significant drama (we topped up with snacks and drinks at Victoria).

When I finally got home I think I peed for the first time that day, as did the three-year-old, and we all collapsed in front of the fan.

Whilst our day ended up being quite a palaver, I think under different weather conditions this would have been a really interesting and engaging trip for the children. In fact as I wiltingly turned the key in the front door the three-year-old turned to me and said 'I really enjoyed our trip to Buckingham palace' and for me that made every moment of it absolutely worthwhile.