Where did the selfie sticks go?

The local papers reported that Brexit has increase the visitors to London by 40%. It hasn’t seem that way as the places we have visited were not that super busy or crowded. Unlike Paris where chances were high you would get pushed out of the way by a Chinese tour guide and have 30 of their group rush by you trying to keep up with the guide with selfies sticks, we had not visited sites that were popular with the private tour groups.

It changed today.  We went to the British museum.  There were no lines to get in this morning and it only slightly busy in the lobby. However upstairs in the Egyptian mummy rooms we hit the jackpot with the privately led tour groups.  The tour guides were just as pushy but there were no selfies sticks like last year in Paris.  These groups did speed through the rooms so I’m not sure what the participants really got to experience.  It took us a few hours just to go through the Egyptian rooms and in the Roman Empire rooms.  We also accidentally discovered a room that held the 1000+ year old Chinese Admonitions Scroll. Its only on display a few weeks each year so we were luckly to have seen it.   As we were about the leave Ian reminded us about the Rosetta Stone display.  It must be pretty famous if I’ve heard about it.  However I was dreading that this display would be like the Mona Lisa at the Louvre where it would be mobbed due to its importance in history. I guess it wasn’t that historical as there were people around the displace but we were eventually above to get to the front and see its inscriptions.

Afterwards we stopped by the Wellington Arch This is a monument to Lord Wellington who was in charge of the battle where his soldiers defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.  Inside the arch had an exhibit that details the Battle at Waterloo.  Everyone was so grateful in England that they erected a beautiful arching his honor and gave him lots of money. It’s not a major attraction but we needed to stop by as it was one of the few places in London were we could get our English Heritage Trust Pass.  This pass will allow us to get into various sites throughout England for free with parking including Stonehenge.

Since Buckingham Palace was  nearby we walked over to see it.  The changing of the guards already occurred earlier in the day so there wasn’t much except to stand at the fence and watch the guards stand and take a photo just to prove we were also there.