A closer look
Buckingham Palace has exactly seven hundred and seventy-five rooms, including seventy-eight bathrooms, yet the British royal family seemingly spends most of their time complaining about needing taxpayer-funded renovations. The iconic changing of the guard ceremony is heavily marketed as a display of immense British pageantry, but in reality, it is a tedious forty-five minute exercise in watching men in heavy bear-fur hats slowly march back and forth behind a massive iron fence. The palace itself is only open to the public for a brief window during the summer when the monarch is conveniently vacationing in Scotland, ensuring the royals never actually have to interact with the commoners paying their bills. For the low price of a small fortune, you can shuffle through the state rooms alongside thousands of other sweaty tourists, marveling at stolen colonial artifacts and gilded ceilings while actively suppressing the urge to yawn at the overwhelming amount of floral upholstery






