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"FREE" Sights in London for adults and children.
(they may ask for a couple pound donation at the Free sights) Children 15
yr and younger are often free or very nicely discounted at some of the sights
which require admissions such as the Tower and Wax museum.
Free sights include: British Museum, the Museum of Mankind, Sir John Soane's
Museum, and the Museum of Garden History. The main art galleries - the National
Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Tate Gallery, Wallace Collection are
all free
You will also find many beautiful old churches around London which are usually
free to visit, and usually open during the day. Many are masterpieces designed
by Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723). There are often free mid-day music recitals
in St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church, and St. John's Smith Square. There are
free 30-minute lunchtime music recitals in St. Bride's Church, Fleet Street,
starting 1.15pm, several days each week, except for the 4 weeks before Christmas,
the 6 weeks before Easter, and all of August. (Nearest underground station:
Blackfriars, nearest rail stations: Blackfriars and City Thameslink, Bus
routes: 4, 11, 15, 15B, 23, 26, 76.)
Also free to watch is the 'Changing of the Guard' outside Buckingham
Palace. Here you can see British soldiers in ceremonial uniform handing over
their guard duties. It is a very popular tourist attraction. It is at 11.30am
every two days in the winter, and every day in the summer. Arrive at least
15 minutes early to get a good view. Notices at Buckingham Palace will tell
you which days it will be.
When the Houses of Parliament are in session (not over the summer), it is
possible to watch the debates from the Public Gallery. There is very limited
space in the Gallery, and you may have to queue and wait for a very long
time.
Arrange before
you go:
Attend Tower of London's
"Ceremony
of the Keys" Free at 21:30—a 30 min event. Write 5 weeks before
hand for free tickets. These can be obtained by written application
from:
Ceremony of the Keys Office
Tower of London
LONDON, EC3N 4AB
Great Britain
Tel: +44 (0)20 3166 6278
Provide requested date, and an alternative date. You must enclose an
addressed envelope with an international reply coupon or British stamp. The
best thing to do is to address it to your self at your London Hotel
Florence Museum Reservations--One Number will Reserve
Uffizi - Accademia (Home of David) and Bargello I called the Accademia
and was given the following number to make reservations for all 3 museums.
They don't require CC until you pick up tickets at Florence Museum
box office. From the USA dial 011 39 055 20 4993.
Don Everett 12 May 2000
Rome: from the front lines of Catholicism
Hi All, today we jumped on the metro to the Vatican - only to find
that we were on the wrong platform and when we had to go back out to get
to the other side, we invalidated the tickets we had just spent 5 euros on.
Dang. But now we're whizzes with the ticket machine ... so we go to the stop
for the Vatican Museums, get out, and find a Barack Obama-esque line that
goes on for blocks - and here we thought we were bright and early! Even
granting that this is Holy Week, I cannot believe the number of tourists;
in the summer, it
must
be a complete zoo. But we don't feel quite so dumb when everyone else clearly
is a dumb tourist too. So we decided to skip the museum and go on to St
Peter's. The Onion's "Our Dumb Planet" says of the Vatican, "on this
rock (St Peter) I will build an opulent mansion" ... and that isn't the half
of it. Words fail. I wonder why the earth doesn't fail, because the entire
edifice must weigh a very large number of tons. The stonework is incredible.
The statuary aside, the floors, the walls, the columns, everything carefully
chosen for color and pattern. The guidebook says the basilica will hold 60,000
people, and I believe it, because it didn't seem all that crowded once we
were inside and I know there were lots of people in there. We saw
Michelangelo's Pietà - Franklin commented that the clarity
of the rock makes the statue seem almost alive! I marvel at how stone can
be carved so fluidly, you think if you flicked the folds of the garments
they would move.
After we went through the basilica, the Vatican museum line was markedly
reduced, so we got in it. Not to sound too plebian, but there's a lot
of Pope So-and-so's personal collection of whatever he liked to collect,
which may be great art, but personally I think you can look at so many statues
and paintings and it becomes hard to keep one's attention focused ....
I thought the best part actually was the collection of modern religious art,
which comes right before the grand finale, the Sistine Chapel. It really
is worth the wait. The genius of the paintings are that the figures look
almost 3D, and an intensive restoration project recently has been finished,
so the colors are fantastic. There are even official Vatican shushers who
shssh the assembled multitudes when the noise level in the chapel gets too
high! - Sarah G of Laramie, WY 18 March 2008
Rome wasn't built in a day......
.........and you can't see it all in a day either. Today we sailed
into the Roman Forum about 9 a.m. No lines, lovely. You'll be glad
to hear your little traveling party is getting smarter; the Combo ticket
covers the Forum, Palatine Hill, and the Colosseum,
 and
we were at the Colosseum end of the Forum, and thought it would be a great
idea to pop down there and see it while we were in the vicinity. But, based
on our experience with the metro tix, we thought to ask first - can we
come back in? Turns out the answer is no, you get one swipe at each thing.
It would have been VERY disappointing to spend 15 minutes in the Forum with
what we just spent on those tickets! So ... for the morning we wandered around
the Forum and Palatine Hill, which has things like the Palace of Augustus
(which, when the whole thing was standing, had a perimeter of over a mile
... amazing what you can do with vision, determination, and an endless supply
of expendable labor!), and new Iron Age excavations. (The excavations are
new, that is, not the Iron Age remnants.) So the sum of it all is you can
see old, older, and older yet, and if there is any kind of painting or carving
on it, chances are 98 out of 100 it's some kind of battle scene. The other
two chances are (1) a funeral procession celebrating the deceased's
accomplishments, or (2) some kind of religious motif. The religious motif
can be anything - for example, rather than try to raze pagan monuments like
the Arch of Constantine or the Colosseum, the various popes just slapped
another marble plaque on it with their own names. (For humble servants of
Christ, they were pretty keen on earthly recognition for themselves.)
We did eventually make it to the Colosseum and smugly walked in with our
combo tickets past a huge line of ticket-less sightseers. We were surprised
to see that the bottom of the Colosseum is a maze of little chambers - turns
out there was a wooden floor above these for the public entertainments, and
the lions and gladiators hung out underneath, with a lift system for bringing
up the lions and other wild critters. Can you imagine? "Okay, go fetch Lion
Number One!" Probably sent slaves to do that in case things went awry.
Then we switched gears, walked a couple of blocks in a different direction
to see Michelangelo's statue of Moses in the church of San Pietro di
Vincoli, which also features an altar containing the chains which (legend
says) held St Peter captive in Jerusalem. Then we went to the "church
of the bones" (Santa Maria de Concepzione ... something) which has the
very old skeletons of 4000 Capuchin monks artfully arranged (we did this
for you, Ellen!) and a couple more churches in that area, and walked past
the presidential residence, guarded by carabinieri with automatic
weapons (in contrast to the carabinieri with swords we saw next to the Trevi
Fountain yesterday - quite a bit less quaint).
And now, upon our return to our convent accommodation, the nice lady at the
front desk who works for the monks says our pack is out at the Rome airport,
and she's going to try to persuade them to bring it here. So should I wash
my filthy pants in the sink, or not? (: - Sarah G of Laramie, WY 18
March 2008
I would like to add my
comments!
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Mr.
& Mrs. Leong enjoyed gardens all over Europe. This one at Fontainbleu
Castle near Paris, shows Lorene Leong in front of a conical
shaped tree frequently seen in French Formal Gardens. Thanks for the photo.
Mele