We capped off our time in London with the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour. (I highly recommend this to all HP fans)! We took a double-decker bus to the HP studio and went through two warehouses and an outdoor set area. The first warehouse was full of set pieces, including Great Hall, Gryffindor Common Room, Ministry of Magic, the Burrow, and Snape’s potions classroom just to name a few. The second warehouse was more focused on Diagon Alley and the technical parts of the movies (for example, how engineers made the Book of Monsters and Buckbeak move). Did you know that Hagrid’s head is actually animatronic? Since the actor who played Hagrid was obviously not physically large enough to be ‘half giant’, he had to have an animatronic head. After the warehouses, we toured the outdoor set area. This included the Dursley’s house, the Knight Bus, Hagrid’s motorcycle, Ron’s flying car and a stand selling Butterbeer (butterscotch soda).
Moving the giant chess pieces.
Other tidbits about London:
- The underground (the ‘tube’) is way more confusing and expensive than the subway system in Spain
- Driving on the left side of the street is like seeing someone turn the wrong way down University Avenue; thankfully, signs painted on the road inform you which direction to look in for traffic before walking across
- Taxis in London look like old-fashioned cars; they have all the seats in the back and the ones closest to the driver face backwards
After spending an awesome four days in London, Shelby and I are off for two days in Paris, France!