Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

The ground floor hits you straight away - Egyptian mummies in their cases, Roman glass so clear it barely looks ancient, and a Peruvian textile that stopped me cold with its geometric precision. This is the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, and it's genuinely free, which feels like someone's made a mistake in your favour.

You'll find yourself wandering through everything from Bronze Age tools to Pacific Islander artefacts. The Egyptian section is the obvious draw, but the real treasure is elsewhere - Byzantine silver, intricate jade carvings, a 3,000-year-old wooden coffin still bearing traces of paint. The museum doesn't overwhelm you with explanatory panels; it trusts you to look properly.

This works brilliantly for anyone with actual curiosity rather than a tick-box mentality. Older kids and teenagers do well here if they're remotely interested in how people lived. Toddlers? Less so - it's not interactive in the modern sense, and frankly there's too much fragile stuff at eye level.

Allow a couple of hours minimum, longer if you're thorough. Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm, and Sundays from noon. It's a five-minute walk from Cambridge city centre, so combining it with a punt or a college visit makes sense. If you're camping at Cherry Hinton or any of the sites within a few miles, this beats another museum in town and costs you nothing.