The Royal Family ★★☆
The British Royal Family. (Note: Those aren't people in the picture, but rather their wax dopplegängers from Madame Tussaud's)
Fun facts and history about Queen Elizabath II and Britain's Royal Family
Fun Royal facts
- The Queen does not own Buckingham Palace—or, indeed, most Royal Family residences. They are held in trust by the people for the use of the Sovereign. She actually only owns two properties: Balmoral Castle in Scotland, and Sandringham House in Norfolk.
- You can actually spend the night at Balmoral Castle (though not when the Royals are in residence).
- The Queen doesn't need a passport. Since all British passports are issued "In the name of Her Majesty," the Queen can just vouch for herself—though her husband, Prince Charles, and everyone one else in the household, does have a passport.
- The Royal Standard flag never flies at half-mast since the monarch is never dead. Whenever one king or queen dies, his or her successor immediately becomes the new monarch. "The king is dead, long live the king!"
Activities, walks, & excursions tours
- Viator.com - Best one-stop shopping site for all sorts of activities, walking tours, bus tours, escorted day trips, and other excursions. It is actually a clearinghouse for many local tour companies and outfitters, and since it gets a bulk-rate deal on pricing (and takes only a token fee for itself), you can actually sometimes book an activity through Viator for less than it would cost to buy the same exact tour from the tour company itself. (I once booked a Dublin pub crawl via Viator and later discovered that I saved about $1.50; also, the tour turned out to be sold-out, and they were turning away the folks in front of me in line, but since I had a pre-booked voucher I got in.)Partner
- Londonwalks.com - Since the 1970s, the gold standard in city walking tours and museum tours—and cheap, to boot. Just meet your guide at the appointed time and place (usually a Tube stop), pay your £10 (students or over 65s are £8; under 15 free), and prepare for a good two hours of amazing cultural insight and historic anecdotes. If you plan on taking three or more walks, buy a "Frequent London Walker" card for £2 from your first guide, then each subsequent walk costs £8. They also run popular excursions outside London for £18. Note that the fee just covers the guided tour; you pay for any admissions (or, for excursions, travel expenses) yourself.
- Contexttravel.com - This bespoke walking tour company doesn't even call its 200 tour leaders "guides." It calls them "docents"—perhaps because most guides are academics and specialists in their fields: history professors, archeologists, PhDs, art historians, artists, etc. Groups are miniscule (often six people maximum), and most docents can be booked for private guiding sessions as well. They aren't always the cheapest tours, but they are invariably the best. People rave about Context.Partner
- City-discovery.com - Chief rival to Viator (though with a less spiffy interface and often sub-par text descriptions), representing many of the same tours (at the same prices). However, it also seems to cover more destinations, especially secondary ones. When it comes down to it, City-Discovery and Viator have maybe 70% the same inventory, but then 30% will be completely different (some Viator has City-Discovery does not, other vice-versa) so it pays to check through the offerings from both.Partner
Related
★★☆
London's Royal Residence, from the State Rooms and royal gardens to the Queen's Gallery and the (yawnfest) changing of the guard
