3-18-14
Except it rained. And was
incredibly windy. And that is from a
North Dakotan. But despite the cooler
weather the day was quite busy. My
morning started out by realizing that Leanna, Jordan and I all had tickets for
a Muggle Tour, basically a tour of London that shows off different areas that
have Harry Potter references, but all of our tickets were for a different
time. So we first went to Kings Cross
Station where they have built in a platform 9 ¾ meant for picture taking.
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| Platform 9 3/4 |
After Kings Cross we headed over to the
London Bridge area in order to find our tour guide and beg her to let two of us
switch to a different time. Luckily the
tour we met up for only had two people going, so all of us were able to join
the group. The tour was amazing. Our guides name was Izzy Granger, and she was
very informative. She talked about the
Harry Potter movies, showed us a variety of places including where they shot
some of the scenes for the movie, as well as the areas where J.K. Rowling got
inspiration for things such as Diagon Alley,
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| Diagon Alley |
Nocturne Alley, the boat of Victor
Krum’s School (I apologize, my brain has stopped functioning and can not recall
the name of the ship or the school) as well as showing us the area of London
that houses parliament and shows how the parliament and the Ministry of Magic
are similar.
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| The Boat. Really the Golden Hinde |
Just the Harry Potter
information is well worth your time and money if you are a Harry Potter fan,
but the guides also tell a lot about the history of London, why certain things
are the way they are, such as London’s lack of garbage cans or rubbish bins is
due to too many attempted and successful trash can bombs, or a humorous
anecdote about the making of the Lion sculptures in Trafalgar Square. The tour is a must see attraction for any
Harry Potter fan, and for those of you who are not fans, you will be after
taking the tour.
After the 2
ish hour Harry Potter tour, we went for a stroll around town attempting to find
a music shop for Jordan. After passing
up the shop about 4 times, we finally realized where it was. The people in the area were very helpful,
friendly, and polite. We soon met up
with Mitch and Anna to go on a pub-crawl.
The point of the crawl is to visit 8 or 9 different historical pub
locations, but we some how only made it to two of the pubs. I am quickly realizing just how expensive
going out to a pub actually is. A note
for future reference, when going out anywhere, do NOT forget your tube
pass. I made that mistake today and
hopefully will not again. Not having a
clear way to get across town is not fun.
On a good note, Mitch bought a Scotch egg. It is basically a soft-boiled egg wrapped in
meet and deep-fried. It was served with vinegar
BBQ sauce, and was absolutely delicious.
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| A Scotch Egg |
Following
the pub run we met up with the rest of our party to go out to dinner and see a
performance of the Lion King. I was
simultaneously impressed with the dancing and the projection of music, and
disappointed in the pitch and enunciation of the songs. But I was AMAZED by the costumes. The only way I can describe the costumes was
Dr. Seuss meets Disney meets puppeteers.
Overall a very good, very busy, very expensive day.
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| Waiting for the Lion King to start. |
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