Cult of Dan Brown: The Da Vinci Code: Travel Ideas

Hi all. I have come to write an account of our trip to London last Friday.

There were three of us that went: myself, langdon_lover and a friend called Sam, who wanted to get some sketches and pictures for her art work.

The journey from Chatham to London lasted about an hour, which we had to endure standing up. Most of that was spent talking about random things (getting strange looks from other passengers) and taking pictures of EVERYTHING like crazy tourists.

We somehow managed to find our way to Temple after getting the tube - langdon_lover's map reading skills are life-saving.

We found Temple Church and were very excited. But - there was a notice on the door saying that it was CLOSED!! Not only that, it was only going to be closed for that day - 'sorry if this has caused any inconvinience'! You don't say!

After this disappointment, we decided to visit St Paul's Cathedral to do a bit of church-reading there instead. St Paul's is actually quite breathtaking - from the outside anyway. We got inside (after I got trapped in the revolving doors) and realised that we had to pay! Cheek of it! Who ever said that you have to pay to visit a church?

I managed to drag everyone into Waterstones to find that Umberto Eco book that I want to get. Going down the spiral stairs to the lower floor I was amazed - the wall was lined up with HUGE piles of Dan Brown books! I found a book called 'How to Read a Church' which was quite intriguing, but couldn't find John Langdon's 'Wordplay' anywhere. I told this to Sam and she went, "What, as opposed to foreplay?" This man started sniggering at this, but he was trying discretely to read a Playboy book without anyone seeing.

Well, after a bit of lunch ouside St Pauls, and being attacked by pigeons, we made our way to Westminster Abbey. Finding a tube station in London really is a pain in the neck. There are underground signs everywhere you look - but no underground!! Anyway got to Westminster Abbey, which is also breathtaking - the views in that area are just wow! We pushed our way through the seas of tourists and businessmen to the Abbey - but imagine our disappointment when we found out that the entrance fee was £20! I swear in the book Robert Langdon got in for free! I was willing to pay, but I didn't know how much money I would need for the rest of the day. The queue was also never-ending - we needed time to go to the Tate Britain gallery and the Science Museum. The Science Museum was great - the shop especially, we almost missed the train home because I couldn't decide what to get.

I managed to take a few pictures during the day and hope to post them on here, but my idiot sister opened the back of my camera, which I think ruins the film, so I don't know whether they'll survive.

Hopefully we'll be going again soon when Temple Church is actually open and we have a lot more spending money to get into everything....

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