A Good Plan Gone Awry

Services at Westminster Abbey, left, were followed by a traditional English pub breakfast, right, of beans, bacon, sausage, fried egg, dry toast and a mushroom.

We attended services this morning at Westminster Abbey, the enormous church in downtown London adjacent to the Houses of Parliament. Laura had the idea to go there to try to avoid the f12 per person cover charge which is assessed to see the place. To allow time to get across town to the Tower which closes early in winter, we had to attend the 8 a.m. service. As a result, we had to leave home at 7 a.m. Well, it was all a good idea, but in execution it didn't quite work out as planned. The Westminster Abbey authorities have apparently encountered the avoidance routine before, and access to the anything more than a limited chapel area for services is strictly off-limits. If you want to see, you will pay. Thus, the reward for our parsimony was that we to attend a thoroughly uninspiring service, and aside from the tomb of Sir Isaac Newton and the ribbed barrel vaulting of the cathedral , we saw little of the cathedral's treasures. Having started early, however, we had plenty of time to follow up services with an authentic English breakfast at a pub, and because we hadn't paid admission to the abbey, we had plenty of cash to pay for it. All that aside, we saw enough of the abbey to convey the idea of its size and its decoration. And given the walking that was to come later in the day, it's just as well we didn't end up walking around the marble halls of Westminster any more than we did.