London

I was delighted to find out that National History Museum (as well as Science museum) became completely free of charge some time between 1992 when I last visited and now. As soon as my daughter was big enough to say dinosaur I took here there on one of our day London trips and we spent about 2.5 hours wandering about the collections.

The building itself makes it worth a visit, now beautifully cleaned to reveal Neo-Gothic glory of the intricate multi-coloured facade where the sculptures depict members of the animal kingdom rather than gargoyles. Welcome to the beginnings of the science age.

The Natural History museum comprises Life Galleries, covering mostly animal life (a lot of them extinct) and Earth Galleries, covering subjects like geology, volcanoes, minerals and the like. Please note that there is very, very little plant related material in Natural History Museum, if you want to see the plants you have to go to Kew Gardens!

I have to say that for a casual visitor Life Galleries are definitely the priority, and if you have little time (1 hour or less) you would be better to concentrate solely on these. Most of the exhibitions are located on the ground level of that amazing building, but some have raised walkways/ramps/gallery balconies to see from above. The material is divided according to the systematic of animal world but some highlights are dotted around the impressive main hall, whose centre is graced by fantastic dinosaur skeleton so often associated with the museum.

The dinosaur section is very, very good: informative, with plenty of text and interactive/electronic displays; lots of fossil exhibits and models, including robotic models. The absolute highlight must be a life-sized robotic model of T-rex which moves and roars (randomly, so it's more scary). My 4 year old daughter was absolutely terrified even though I carried her (but she remembered it best of the whole museum too).

The other good section is the large mammal one, with plenty of models and stuffed animals placed in one room so you can actually compare the size of the blue whale to other dolphins, giraffes or elephants. The gallery above that exhibit is devoted to sea mammals (mostly whales/dolphins) and is fascinating, with films, demonstrations, maps and models to make their physiology and life closer to us.

There is plenty of stuffed animals in NHM, a lot of them bit scruffy (they display the ones in worse state keeping the better ones for research purposes). Recently they also started to display the specimens in jars - spooky looking lizards, turtles and other strange creatures preserved in alcohol in old fashioned glass containers. I found it bit horrible but my daughter was fascinated and loved it!

I was slightly disappointed by Primate section located on the first floor gallery which, though interesting (we loved trying to guess the sounds monkeys make to communicate dangers!), seemed bit sparse.

Above the great Hall rests one of the few plant-related exhibits, a cross section of a giant sequoia tree felled in 19th century after something like 1000 years of life. Truly impressive!

We only skipped through Creepy Crawlies (on arthropods) and Human Biology, but they both seemed very interesting, especially for older children/adults.

There were two temporary exhibitions, one on ape photographic portraiture, showing close-ups of various chimp and gorilla faces with personal information exhibited nearby, that was all in a low-light environment and with jungle noises surrounding us and was quite atmospheric but slightly unsettling. The other was on diamonds and as it charged GBP9, we didn't go.

We went round only some of the Earth Galleries and rather quickly: the entrance is very impressive, with escalator taking the visitors up to the sphere made of what looked like rusty tin plates, filled with spooky light. The galleries are interesting, though there is less to simply look at and more to take in. I would say that the youngest age that would be able to enjoy it has to be at least 7-8 year olds, and it's probably better suited to adults and Secondary School age children.

The museum has the usual cafe(s), shop as well as cloakroom (very useful for day-trippers and in the winter). The charge for leaving a piece of luggage is GBP3, which is by the way significantly lower than a charge at Victoria Station left luggage (where it costs GBP5.50).