London Highlights, including the Harry Potter Studio Tour

 So while Jason is doing this crazy long and hard mountain running 6 day race in Wales, the girls and I explored London. 

We stayed in a cozy studio suite near Baker St station and that worked out well. Getting around on the subway is awesome easy. We ended up with two proper days to be tourists in the city.

Day one: The Warner Bros Harry Potter Studio tour

This was the one thing we decided to splurge on in London. We pre-booked tickets that included bus transportation to and from, and the entrance to the studio itself. We took the metro to Kings Cross, took our photos at platform 9 3/4, and then caught the tour bus. It's over an hour to the suburbs to see the studio, and then we were actually inside from 11:15am until 3pm, but this ended up taking all day. It was totally awesome and we LOVED it. Of course, we are all huge HP nerds and love all the books and movies and characters. So if you're not into the stories, then you wouldn't enjoy it.

We've been to the Universal Studios attraction near Hollywood, and that one is more focused on rides (and it's SUPER awesome). This one has no rides. It's more like an amazing museum about the making of the movies and has loads of sets, costumes, special effects displays, props, robots, and explanations of certain scenes or movie-making challenges. It's pretty cool because the majority of the films were actually made right there on those sets at this location. So the actors and the crew spent 10 years practically living and working there. I really learned a lot about how they combine real life actor and prop filming with green screens and animated or robotic objects. It's amazing to see what things can be made from one staircase or one model of Hogwarts.

Our bus to/from London

The Great Hall

Gryffindor common room

Dumbledore's office

The potion's room

Boarding the Hogwarts Express

Model of the Burrow

The Knight Bus with beds inside

Entering #4, Privet Drive

Letters flying everywhere inside the Dursley's house

Pulling a mandrake out while inside the greenhouse

The Ford Anglia

Hagrid's motorbike

Gringotts

Learning how the Goblins came to life with makeup

Learning how they made treasure grow taller in the vault / getting the sword

Diagon Alley

This huge model of Hogwarts was used in much of the castle filming

Day two: London touristy things and Shakespeare's Globe

We did the things you are supposed to do when you're in London: Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Parliament and Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, boat on the Thames, Millenium Bridge, London Bridge, Tower London and the Tower Bridge. We had lunch at the Borough Markets and then went to Shakespeare's Globe theatre and watched "Much Ado About Nothing".

Buckingham Palace

Canada House at Trafalgar Square

Downing Street, with reporters here and there (waiting to see the new Prime Minister?)

Westminster Abbey

Ava was very excited about Big Ben

The Milenium Bridge

Tower Bridge

Mac n cheese in the Borough Markets

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

I grew up enjoying Shakespeare plays in school and in University. I've seen many plays in Victoria, Vancouver, and in Ashland Oregon. But I had always wanted to come to the Globe Theatre and watch a Shakespeare play. When booking this trip, I wasn't too sure how it would go with the girls. Would they like it? Would they understand the story? If we got the really cheap standing tickets ("groundlings"), would they be tall enough to see the stage? It all worked out. The girls knew this was important to me, so they did their best not to complain with standing for almost 3 hours and being uncertain about some details of the story. I think they understood more and enjoyed more than I expected. It was a dream come true for me and a very entertaining performance.

So that's it for London! I'd say everything was hugely successful and we enjoyed the things we were able to do.