As a woman, I’ve spent a good chunk of my life waiting in line for the bathroom. I simply don’t have the patience to wait in line for much else. Museums, like many other tourist attractions, require exactly that: a lot of line-waiting, slow-walking, and a whole other level of patience—not to mention time. Personally, I’d rather spend all my patience and time eating, drinking, and being in a place, rather than fighting my way through a group of Italian tourists for a distant glimpse of a tiny painting I’m supposed to care about and don’t. That’s right, Mona Lisa. I’m looking at you. Or more accurately, I’m looking at the bald spot of the man in front of me who’s taking pictures of you with his iPad from 100 feet away.
During study abroad in college, I had the luxury of visiting places like the Louvre and the Musée D’Orsay as “field trips” and it ruined me for life. These were school-sponsored surgical strikes where you’d visit a set loop of works you’d been studying and then get the hell out of there. We were that cloud of students pausing en masse in front of a painting for 10 minutes and totally blocking everyone’s way. It was fantastic. Honestly, if you ever have the chance to visit a museum in that capacity, take it. It’s the best way to get something out of the experience. You learn enough beforehand to care about what you’re seeing and then follow a person who can take you straight to it. They can also point you to the exit and the bathroom on every floor—which is definitely an under-rated asset.
If you can’t go back in time and study abroad, there are options available for guided tours, of course—but those often cost money, and the likelihood that you’re actually going to “study” the content ahead of time is low if you’re just visiting as part of a vacation. So, what usually happens is you show up at a famous museum that’s too big to see in a day with little to no knowledge of what’s there or how to find it. Three hours later, you’re tired, you’re yelling at each other, and you couldn’t name a single thing you’ve seen if someone put a gun to your head. That’s why, on my first trip to Europe with Ray, we skipped most standard museums. Or more accurately, I made him skip them. The lines, the major attractions, all of it. Almost. We did visit the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, mainly to see the paintings every girl in 1997 had a print of in her dorm room--but it was a fairly painless experience.
Skipping museums as a pair of childless adults is pretty easy, but it’s harder to justify when traveling with older kids. I mean, you’ve gotta do something educational on an extended vacation, right? Even if they learn nothing beyond the word for “exit” (which is “way out” in the UK, and “sortie” in France, by the way), you’ve given your children the gift of something to complain about in therapy as adults.
With that goal in mind during our recent month-long trip to London, we visited so…many…museums. Most of them—the National Gallery, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert—were completely free, making them considerably more accessible (and less painful to bail out of). We were quick to find out that 2 consecutive hours is basically the limit for any museum visit. While it’s possible to break for lunch and then resume exploring for another 2 hours in the afternoon if necessary, it’s generally preferable to take two hours and call it a day. Beyond that, you’re just not paying attention anymore and irreparable trauma may result.
For an anti-museum gal, establishing well-defined time boundaries was key, but I also discovered that “lived-in museums” were much more fun for me than wandering through a maze of paintings or antiquities. By that, I mean places where real people once lived that were converted to a museum as a showcase of their life. The following is a short list of my favorite lived-in museums of London, with links to highlights:
Kensington Palace:
Click here to read about our experience
To really enjoy these places though, I recommend taking a page from my study abroad playbook and learning a little bit about the people who lived there before you visit. I’m sure there’s plenty to read on these topics, but the easy way out, as always, is to watch something instead. For easily-digestible background on The Tower of London and Hampton Court Palace, "The Tudors" is a great show to binge-watch. It’s not a family show and it may not be 100 percent historically accurate at all times, but it gives you a nice overview of King Henry VIII and all the major players that came in and out of these two locales. Movies about his daughter, Queen Elizabeth I are also good to watch. We saw "Elizabeth" (starring Cate Blanchett), but there are a few other options available to get familiar with how her story fits into the Tower and Hampton Court.
For Kensington Palace, it’s helpful to bulk up on your Princess Diana knowledge, since this is where she lived and many attractions in the Kensington area are dedicated to her memory. We watched "The Crown", which focuses on the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. The whole thing was interesting to us, but you can always fast forward to the Diana Era episodes if you want to watch "The Tudors" and would rather leave more time for the bodice-ripping and heretic-burning you get with that. Queen Victoria was another famous inhabitant of Kensington Palace that flew under the radar with us until we visited. Apparently, there’s a movie called Young Victoria (starring Emily Blunt) that might help you feel more connected to the experience of touring her apartments, but we learned a good bit just being there with no prior knowledge as well.
In spite of myself, I recommend popping into as many free museums in London as you can—because 1) they’re free and 2) they’re chock full of things that are generally considered precious. But if you just can’t even with that shit—I get it. In which case, my favorite lived-in museums may be for you.
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