How do you manage a visit to one of the world’s greatest museums without being overwhelmed?

After many visits to exceptional museums over the years – I really have no great answer.

If you tend to want to wander around a bit and just read the signage I don’t you believe you see the bigger picture of a museum collection. Alternatively, you can often do an audio or docent tour and hit the highlights of the museum’s collection – but you tend to see the pieces which everyone else is also going to see.

If I am by myself – I mentally flip a coin.

Since there were three of us – we elected to go with a with an audio tour and turned to Rick Steves for his British Museum Tour.

This audio tour highlighted 26 different exhibits. Since we had allocated only part of a single day for the British Museum on this trip – the audio tour was exactly what the doctor ordered.

If you have not been to the British Museum it should be on your “must do” travel list. The displays are spectacular and you can walk away with a great appreciation for the ancient world and the development of Europe and Great Britain from early times to present day – all in one place.

One of the downsides of hitting the highlights is that many of the rest of the Museum visitors also are using the same strategy – so many of the highlighted exhibits also had most of London standing there and looking it and listening to different versions of their preferred audio tour.

Two quick anecdotes on our visit to the Museum ….

First anecdote – as we were walking around to the various exhibits I was getting a bit tired and so started leaning on a stone object as I was listening to Rick describe an Egyptian artifact. Andrew, who was close to me at the time, told me I was leaning on an ancient stone Egyptian Sarcophagus with a clear “do NOT touch” message next to it. I quickly stopped leaning and am grateful that an angry British museum guard did not have me blacklisted and thrown out of the British Museum for touching an exhibit.

Second anecdote – we observed that the Museum had a poster announcing a display commemorating the United States 250th Birthday. I thought to myself – this is pretty cool especially since we won our independence from Great Britain.

We then entered Gallery #3 to see the display and perhaps gain some of the perspective of Great Britain on the American War of Independence. To set the stage here a bit … picture taking a coat closet and turning it into a “gallery”. It was the smallest space you can imagine with only a four panel display – including a picture of the U.S. Declaration of Independence that had been filed away and found many years later.

In case you want it … my personal translation from British English to American English …. “We found this document in an old file folder somewhere and later (2015) determined it was an original copy of the American Declaration of Independence.”

That is enough commentary on sarcophagus leanings and the small display commemorating our 250th birthday …

The Rick Steves tour highlighted exhibits in ancient Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Rome. The scale and grandeur of the displays is really hard to capture on an iPhone – but I certainly tried.

We took an audio tour break, grabbed a quick bite to eat in The Great Court Restaurant and then headed back to the first floor to finish off the audio tour.

We did have some extra time – so we explored Gallery #3 (see above) and then wandered at our own pace through several galleries focused on medieval Europe.

I had booked a 3:00 p.m. high tea in the Great Court Restaurant – so we ended our time at the museum in style.

High tea consists of your choice of freshly brewed tea along with scones, clotted cream, bite size pieces of various cakes and small finger sandwiches. It is a fun tradition and is worth doing when in the U.K.

Normally we would have had a relaxing dinner and called it a day – but we had one more event planned.

After a quick trip back to the hotel and a short nap – we set off to see Phantom of the Opera.

We immensely enjoyed Phantom at His Majesty’s Theatre in the West End of London. The theatre was very intimate and the show was spectacular. The last time I saw Phantom was when Manhattan High School put it on in 2010 when Andrew was a sophomore in high school. The actors were magnificent, the experience was immersive and it was a great way to cap off a really fun day.

We headed back to the hotel for a late dinner and night cap before heading to bed.

Overall, it was a magnificent day in London!

Until next time …