Our second day in London, the frugal part of our mother daughter trip, was a great one, in which we spent no money other than some coffee to warm ourselves up.
We left the hotel we were staying in early in the morning because we wanted to see the changing of the guards that started at 11, and I read it started to get packed early so we should aim to get there an hour beforehand. So we left at 9ish to make the trip to central London by public transportation, got off at Green Park station, and walked through Green Park with the masses of people who apparently also had the same idea- get to Buckingham Palace early.
It was beautiful to see all the greenery and the yellow daffodils everywhere.
By the time we stopped to get a coffee right outside the roundabout in front of Buckingham palace, there were already such crowds and it was just 10:05 am. The Victoria Memorial, in the center of the roundabout, which has the best views, was filled with people and not possible to find where to stand. We found a place to stand all the way at the very front next to one of the gates to Buckingham Palace. I didn’t realize it was just one of the few gates and not the main one, which meant that when the guards were coming down the mall and into the palace we weren’t able to see them really at all…
However, there were two parts of the ceremony where a contingent of the guard broke off and came down and went into the gate right in front of us, as you can see by the video I took.
We also got to see the Household Cavalry going by twice, once in red, and once in blue.
After the crowd thinned out after the ceremony ended we were able to get close enough to the palace to take pictures from the front.
Here is Rose standing in the pose of one of the guards.
Rose had a really amazing time. She said changing of the guards and the Natural History Museum were her two favorite things on our London trip.
Next we took a bus to go to the British Museum, entirely free, and, as my friends and I like to call it, the museum of what the British Empire stole from the rest of the world. There is seriously nothing like the British Museum anywhere else in the world, because no where else in the world did what the British Empire did, but it also makes it a very fascinating place with ancient artifacts from around the world, a place where you can learn about the entire world under just one roof.
We got to see one of the most amazing archeological finds of all times, the Rosetta Stone, which helped them decipher all the Egyptian hieroglyphs that we know today, to know about ancient Egpyt. It is so fascinating.
We saw lots of statues of pharaohs, including some giant-eared pharaoh’s statues…
We saw so many sarcophagi, painted coffin cases, and actual mummies themselves. There were even painted coffin cases from the Roman era in Egypt, combining hieroglyphics with Roman designs. I thought that was fascinating.
I’d been to the British museum before, but hadn’t gotten to explore much of it beyond the Egyptian, Assyrian, and ancient Levant sections, but this time I had more time and we were able to explore most of it, and we got to see this Easter Island statue, Moai, made by the Rapa Nui people between the 1250 and 1500!
The ancient Chinese section was beautiful, with such pristine artwork saved from so long ago!
There was this statue from over 1000 years ago in such vivid colors, such pristine condition, it’s amazing.
We loved the comical look of this warrior and interestingly enough that he’s standing on a sheep or similar…
We both really enjoyed the British Museum and picked up some nice gifts for the family from the gift shop there.
And of course when we were finished with the British Museum, we had to take some iconic photos with the red telephone boxes.
And thus concludes the frugal two days we had in London.
We had another half a day in London before our flight to Sweden (I will write about our trip to Stockholm, because I was able to do it on a budget), but that was a frugal fail, but in spirit of honesty, I’ll share about it here.
My daughter’s one request to do in London that would cost money was going to the London Eye. I bought tickets the night before since its cheaper that way… but in the morning when we got there, it was foggy, and we didn’t see much of the view. So that was a big waste of money. Originally we were going to go to Horizon 22, a free view of London from high up, but we missed the date of our original ticket because our trip to London was cut short, and we weren’t able to get tickets for when we actually were there.
Then we went to the National Gallery which I thought Rose would appreciate the paintings of Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Rembrandt, Picasso, etc… since she’s an artist, but she thoroughly did not enjoy it. She thought the famous paintings that got the most attention were really ugly and painted badly, and the ones that didn’t get attention were better painted. But there were also quite a few gory paintings which she said traumatized her. So after just a short amount of time there she asked to leave.
Overall our trip to London was a terrific one. We had just 2.5 days to do touring and we had 2 terrific days and one half a day that was a bummer, but that is fine. It was a short trip, we wish we could have done more, but no regrets.
Can’t wait to show you what we did next, in Stockholm!
Have you been to London before? Done it on a budget? What budget friendly things did you do? What was your favorite? Did you ever try to bring a kid to an art museum and have a similar experience to myself with Rose at the art museum?
One Response
No, my kids have always loved art and been surrounded by it. Get her an art history book and teach her to appreciate art.