Trip Report: Museum and Muggles

Today we had two tours planned one at the British Museum and the other was the Tour for Muggles. Our first tour wasn’t until 1:30 pm. We took our time this morning and slept a little later. Stopping at the Borough Market for an early lunch before taking the tube to the British Musem.

I don’t think we picked the closest tube station to the museum, therefore, we had a bit of a walk to get to our meeting point. It was during that extra walk I realized I hadn’t chosen the best shoes for site-seeing. Luckily I had overpacked and had a pair of sneakers back at the Hotel to change into after the tour.

The British Museum

On our Trips to Italy, we had taken tours with Walks of Italy. I was excited to see they offered walks in London as well. One of the choices was Walk on Walk off tour. Take Walks gives you a choice of 12 different tours that you can take. Just show up at the time on the schedule and go on a tour that lasts an hour to hour and a half. We were really lucky with all of our tours. There was only one tour with other people. The rest of them were just us, it was like having private tours.

Our guide for the Treasures of the British Museum was Jeremy and he took us on a whirlwind tour of the museum. An hour and a half is not nearly enough time to see all of the museum, but it gives you a look at the highlights, including the Rosetta Stone.

The museum was established in 1753 and contains over 8 million works from all over the world—largely due to the expansion of the British Empire. The museum is 92,000 sq. m (990,000 sq. ft), made up of 4 main wings. The great court was opened in 2000 and increased the public space of the museum by 40%. A guided tour will help to make the most of your time there.

The Rosetta Stone

The most noteworthy work at the museum is the Rosetta Stone. It has a decree in three languages carved into the stone Hieroglyphs, Demotic script and Ancient Greek. Since it was the same wording in three different languages it acted as a key that allowed for the translation of hieroglyphics

The Lewis Chessman

The Lewis Chessman are made from walrus ivory and date from before 1200 AD. You will recognize them if you are a fan of Harry Potter. This is the original, a replica set was used in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Mummies

If you like Mummies this is a great place to get your fill.

Hoa Hakananai’a from Easter Island

Another work you will recognize is Hoa Hakananai’a from Easter Island.

When our tour finished we spent some time wandering around the museum. It is immense, you could easily spend a whole day there.

Cabs and Sim Cards

Since we spent the afternoon touring the museum and had another tour booked for the evening, we opted to take a cab back to our hotel. You could use Uber, but we wanted to travel in a London black cab. The app I used was Gett. It works similarly to Uber and lets you travel in a black cab. If you are a group of more than four it may actually be cheaper than the tube. This link will give you £3 off your first ride, or use code GTLVZVG.

Coming from Canada our wireless plans are very high especially when travelling. For this trip, we ordered a sim card from Amazon. It gave us a UK based phone number 3000 minutes, 3000 texts, 12GB of data for 30 days. We were very happy with the service it worked like a dream. Originally we were going to buy a sim when we arrived in London. It was nice to have it already on hand to use when we arrived.

Tour for Muggles

We booked the evening Tour for Muggles, the meeting spot was nearby our hotel at the London Bridge train station. The tour lasts about two and a half hours and takes you to many of the filming spots in London. You do need an Oyster card to travel between spots, and one of the filming locations is in the Westminster tube station.

Our guide was great. If you are a fan of the movies, I highly recommend the tour. It was £14 for adults and £11 for 11 and under. Make sure you book ahead it looks like the tours do sell out. The tour does not include a visit to the 9 3/4 platform, but you can go on your own to Kings Cross station.

We took the train back to London Bridge station at the end of the tour and headed to bed. We had a big day planned for the next day: a Walk-on Walk-off tour of Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, followed by a visit to Camden Market.

If you are looking to see the Harry Potter filming locations, but don’t want to do a tour you can find information online of the places to visit.

If you enjoyed this post and wanted to read more about our trip I have posted about our planning, travelling to London, our first day in London, and visiting the Borough Market. As well as stateroom tours of our secret porthole rooms 6006 and 5520.

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