Wednesday, December 14, Day 3 - Part 1

 Wednesday!  Our first full day in London, and boy do we have lots planned!  Harry Potter Studio Tour, Wicked at Victoria Apollo Theater, dinner in there somewhere, yay!

But first, breakfast!  In researching places to stay, I partly chose this aparthotel as it had fantastic reviews, looked clean, semi affordable, and it offered a breakfast on site that was more than just a continental (American style) spread of danishes and pastries.  We met Mom downstairs in the lobby, and began our perusal of the wares.  Cereal, pastries, toast, yogurt, coffee, cloudy apple juice (yes, it was called that), and some orange juice.  Huh.  That's not what I was expecting.

As we were browsing, our favorite Italian employee greeted us and showed us the menu to order from.  It had decidedly British style selections, but...when in Rom...er, London...!  I ordered the Wilde Breakfast Sandwich, and Mom and Bill ordered Eggs Benedict (Bill without the sauce, which I'm not going to try and attempt to spell).  Overall, breakfast was good, despite the commentary from the peanut gallery.  

Paying close attention to the time, I finally decided it was time to get moving, since I wasn't 100% sure where the meet up point was for the Harry Potter Tour.  Mom informed us that she wanted to keep her back feeling fresh, so she was going to "opt out" of the HP tour, and would join us for Wicked.  So, Bill and I were off.


We found our meeting point, and confirmed it with the throngs of young girls that were apparently also waiting for the same tour.  As we glanced around, we confirmed that not only was I definitely getting old, but Bill was downright geriatric compared to the rest of the group that was to be attending the HP Studio Tour.  Eeks.  We did get to ride on the bus above, which was cool on the outside, but from the seats inside the weird wrap over the windows was wreaking havoc on my eyes.  It made it very difficult to see the scenery as we drove through London, in a fashion that was modeled after the drive that Harry took in the Knight Bus.  No joke.

After about an hour, we found ourselves outside the WB Studio, ready to engage in the HP Tour.

As we were walking up to the studio, I noticed that the "pillars" we were walking through were not, in fact just random objects.  NOPE! They were WANDS!! I stopped to take a picture, and Bill asked what I was doing.  Once I pointed them out, he was surprised, since he didn't notice them.  Apparently very few people had, as once I pointed them out, the group behind us got really excited and they too started taking pictures.  Fun!


The first part of the tour they instructed us to turn off our phones, as photos and videos were not allowed.  However, I did snap the pictures to at least show the room, and to commemorate the tour.  After about a 10 minute video of boring behind the scenes actors telling us why HP was important, we were finally shown into the Great Hall.

The cool thing about the tour is that these are the actual sets that the actors filmed on.  As in, sat in those benches, used that silver ware, etc. etc.  


Lots of the food was plastic, or modeled, obviously.  However, plenty of it was actually real food!
The clothes shown are the actual outfits worn by the actors.  I was surprised at how SMALL they were.  Like, TINY!
Winter scenes were set up, since it IS Christmas time here...

I snapped the potion bottles, as Bill wants to find/make/have these.  Super cool...

Oh! Our laundry is done, so more of HP Tour after a bit...


Comments

  1. Laura WagnerDecember 19, 2022 at 7:50 AM

    Love the potion bottles. And as far as the clothes went, remember the cast was very young the first episode.

    ReplyDelete

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