Lovely London

London is an exciting city. There's lots of hustle and bustle, sooooo many people and a constant stream of traffic, day and night. And finally we've found a few more food options other than pubs, though to be sure there are plenty of those here, too. If I never have eat fish and chips with mushy peas again, it'll be too soon.

We had five days in London before departing for Paris and we spent the first part of our time being really touristy by riding the London Eye and visiting Big Ben. We also walked past Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret's Church. We saw Buckingham Palace from the Eye. And that was good enough for us lol.

The view from the peak of the wheel

Obligatory selfie

The view as we descend. You can see Big Ben and the House of Parliament in the bottom right corner.

I was trying to be artsy and frame Big Ben in the Coca Cola emblem. It's not so easy to set-up artistic shots with a camera phone. I found myself missing the DSLR a bit on the trip. But not enough to give up the pair of shoes that I would have had to in order to fit the thing in my bag.

The pods you ride in. You can rent out a whole pod to yourself if you want to lay out some cash for it. Like a lot.

It's really big. I was surprised by it's hugeness.

It's so big that I had the hardest time getting the whole thing in one picture.

The Eye at Night. 

Maybe at some point on our trip we'll ask someone to take an actual picture of us. Or buy a selfie stick. But probably not. On either account.

The Eye is in the back left corner. I'm really terrible at selfies. But my husband won't take pity on me and just take the dang picture.

Big Ben on film taken by Josh

Big Ben!!! It chimes every hour on the hour and it plays a song at noon and one o'clock. It might play the song every hour but I didn't listen every hour so, hard to say.

We spent a few days walking and exploring South Bank Center and the Queen's Walk which runs along the River Thames. We walked almost the whole way down to the Tower Bridge (thereby passing like ten other bridges) because I really wanted to see the London Bridge. Once we (finally) got to the London Bridge you could see the Tower Bridge behind it. London Bridge is not super exciting. The Tower Bridge is where it's at. And once again, all that walking and no snacks. I really should've learned my lesson by now and just carry a stupid granola bar or something. But I prevailed. Well, that and we found a donut food truck. But these donuts didn't hold a candle to the one's in Iceland. South Bank Center also has a food truck "festival" every weekend. They have an area with probably 20 or 30 different food trucks that set up every Friday to Sunday. Josh had a burger that made it into his top 3 burgers of all time. (One of the other ones was the Puffin burger he had in Iceland.)

The bridge that the Death Eaters destroy in the HP 6 movie

The Tower Bridge. Way cooler than the London Bridge.

What was really cool about the London Bridge was actually under it. This is the under to the bridge and as you walk through it, it has a constant stream of the "London Bridges Falling Down" song drifting out. And the sidewalk lights up as the music tinkles out.

The Globe Theater (replica)! We didn't go in but we walked by it on our way to the bridges. We studied Shakespeare in 9th grade and for a project I built the Globe Theater out of Popsicle sticks and toothpicks. This replica certainly looks more stable than mine did. 

We stopped for dinner at a restaurant called Giraffe and met the most excitable Italian maître d'. As soon as he found out we were travelling, he began listing off all the places we should go see. He told us about a balcony down the road that has the most fantastic views at night. And he told us a very specific elevator to use. The elevator SANG. As you go up, the voices sing in increasing octaves until it's a lone soprano woman vocalizing. And as you go down, so do the voices until it's one very deep bass man singing. I made Josh ride it all the way up and all the way down and stop at each floor so we could hear them sing at each level. It was super.

Street performers are absolutely EVERYWHERE along the Thames. They spread out just far enough from each other so as not to disturb each other's performances. There are singers, dancers, comedians, statues and one rather odd man in a box dressed as a teddy bear.

The man dressed as a bear thing. He talked in a really high voice and made fun of people. He was hilarious.

A statue-man. His costume was excellent. This is another photo Josh took with his film camera.

A bubble-maker. He had a pool of soapy liquid and all these wand things. He could make the biggest bubbles I've ever seen. Then kids would come and pop them. One of the "wands" he had created a huge bubble that would then tun into hundreds of small bubbles. It was utterly magical and held me captive for quite awhile. This is one of Josh's film shots, too.

Not a street performer but we passed a skate park and the kid in the red hat was really talented. In fact, I'm not sure why but there was a guy with a huge video camera filming him (he's in a red coat in the left corner). The kid could start at the back of the skate park, go down and up a little quarter-pipe type of thing and then jump over the fence and (sometimes) land on his board.  Some serious talent there...The next day we walked by and there was a group of kids filming a hip-hop dance video. Like I said, London is bustling.

Travelling just the two of us is a lot of time spent with each other. Which is a good thing. We really like each other and really enjoy spending time in one another's company. Sometimes though, we need our alone time and in London I found two really lovely ways to spend my alone time.

CrossFit London! I had the misfortune of hitting them up on a Girl Workout day. So. Much. Rowing.

Annnddd...WICKED!!!! EEEKK!! I've wanted to see this show for as long as I can remember. I've read the book (which is really bizarre) and I've been dying to see the musical. Josh didn't really have any interest in it, so while it may have been weird to go to a show alone, I was able to get a really fantastic seat that I wouldn't have been able to do if I had to buy two tickets in an accessible area. The show was absolutely incredible. The costumes, lights and vocals were indescribably brilliant. I'd go see it again in a heartbeat.

On our last day in London, we reserved tickets to go to the Warner Brother's Studio Tour to see the actual sets, costumes and props used in the Harry Potter films. I took 268 pictures but managed to cull it down a bit. The earliest I could get tickets for the tour was at 5:30pm. I had no idea how extensive of a tour it was and absolutely didn't have enough time to get through. The last bus leaves at 9:40pm and we had to make that or sleep outside somewhere and wait for the bus the next morning because it is in the middle of nowhere, London, an hour and a half away from our hotel. So unfortunately we had to really rush through the end which I'm still sad about because they saved some of the coolest parts for the end. But I did get Butterbeer ice cream so that makes it a little better. 

  

The Great Hall. I think this might be Ravenclaw's Table.

All of the teachers' costumes in the front of the Great Hall, complete with their wigs. 

A small fraction of the portraits at Hogwarts. The tall painting in the left of the picture is actually one of the producers of the show, David Heyman. Quite a few actual people involved with the movies modeled for the portraits. All of the portraits were painted by a real artist. She painted every single painting and then someone aged each of them.

The clock from HP 5 when they're taking their O.W.L.'s. It is gigantic. And the pendulum swings. They also had the enormous Chamber of Secrets Door there, nearby the clock (it wasn't CG!).

Remember the scene in the first film where Harry and his classmates learn how to use a broomstick? Stand over it and say "up!". That's what I'm doing here and though you can't see it too well in the photo, there is a broom making it's way up to my right hand.

A bottle of Skele-Gro alongside other Quidditch paraphernalia 

Umbridge's office, complete with kitten plates. Funny story: the crew had to film actual kittens doing the cute things in the photos on the plates for the movies because pictures move in the wizarding world. So naturally, the kittens needed to be filmed being cute and pushing yarn around or lolling about in a toy truck, etc. After they filmed the 60 or so cute kittens, they got them adopted and didn't tell anyone that they were a part of the films. 

The Hogwarts Express. It's actually a train. Like a real, life-size train with lots and lots of cars.

Platform 9 3/4

Number 4 Privet Drive. This is an actual house. They had the Backlot set up with the Knight Bus (it's really 3 stories), the Potter House, the Hogwarts Bridge, The Chess Pieces from the first film, Hagrid's/Sirius' Motorbike and the flying Ford Anglia. 

The Ford Anglia is soooo tiny!

The only Dobby they made. And they only made him for the seventh film. He was CG before that. Aww, Dobby :(

Diagon Alley. It lines both sides of the street. The Puking Pastilles display at Weasley's Wizard Wheezes was actually in motion.

This was my absolute favorite part of the tour and it was at the end. I wish I would have known about it so I could've spent more time reading about it. This is the 1:24 scale model they made of Hogwarts--every single detail included. They used this to film many of the shots in the movie starting with the first film. It took a team of 40 people to create it. More than 50 artists and sculptors maintained it over the course of the films. They used real gravel and installed more than 300 fiber optic lights in the castle for torches, firelight and to give the illusion of students passing through the hallways. This model is so big. It's in it's own huge room and has a ramp that winds around it so that you can see it from every angle. Triumphant music from the films plays in the background and the lights slowly fade from bright to dark to simulate night so that you can get the full effect of the fiber optics. It is truly an incredible piece of art. I want to go back just to see this again.

Well, now you officially know how much of a dork I am....we liked London. I could definitely go back there. But we boarded the EuroStar train, bound for Paris. It was a high speed train that serves, wait for it...afternoon tea. Absolutely delightful. It took two hours and we were in Paris. So much more pleasant than a plane or a ferry. But talk about language barriers. We had a taxi ordered for us before we got off the train so that we could leave right away once we de-trained. They were supposed to be waiting there with our name on a card (just like a movie! I was so excited!) but no one was there. The driver called us but didn't speak any English so she transferred us to someone else who said she'd be there soon. She wasn't. She tried to call again and communicate with us but to no avail. And she didn't come to get us (as far as we know). We tried to ask about the bathroom but couldn't communicate that either. It was an exhausting day just trying to communicate. Talk about being a fish out of water. Ah well. We'll figure it out. At least we better try because we're going to be here for a month!

"If it's Sunny, You Aren't in Scotland!"

 Ah yes, this lovely sentiment was expressed to us from more than one person we met in Scotland. How new and refreshing: it's cold and rainy. I really should't complain as it's just about the coolest opportunity we could ever imagine but at this point in the trip, we really just wanted to be dry and warm...we learned that a Scottish summer is typically one week in April and after that it's mostly rainy and dreary. I'm pretty sure we were actually there during their summer. We did have one day that the sun shone (even then, it did rain at some point during the day. In fact, any day in Britain that has had sun has also had rain. It has literally rained every single day.)

Anyway, I'm done complaining about the weather (today). Scotland was great. We drove from Lancaster, England (oh, by the way we stayed in Lancaster, drove through Carlisle and ate at a pub on Lime Kiln Road. Our forefathers clearly weren't very creative when they chose names for towns and roads in the New World) to Glasgow, Scotland. Glasgow is a hip and trendy city. We found what they termed a craft market. It was like a bunch of art vendors set up, selling different paintings, photos, jewelry, soap....It was a nice dry activity for us. And not for the first time am I a bit bummed that we're travelling with carry-ons. There's no room for souvenirs :/

Weekend Craft Show at Merchant Square, Glasgow

Can you see the alligator that's part of the floor? I don't really know what it's about and neither did the artist closest to the gator. But apparently people come to Merchant Square just to see this little guy. I just happened to notice him as we were walking by. This was probably the first time I've ever been accused of being very observant.

After browsing the market, we started walking more downtown and discovered a pop-up restaurant. Neither of us have ever been to one of those, so while the food wasn't an authentic taste of Scotland, we jumped at the chance to experience a pop-up restaurant. We went inside what looked to be a funhouse or a building that would house a carousel. The guy inside tried to explain who the chef was. Apparently he's a famous chef in Scotland who has his own TV show. We had to explain that we weren't from Scotland because he was looking at us like we we'd been living under a rock to not know who he was. Our bad.

Secret dining?! Don't mind if we do!

The inside of the pop-up restaurant. It was so neat. Mismatched everything, live music and really delicious food.

Our famous chef, Tony Singh and his delightfully adventurous menu. 

So after that, I really wanted to go to this odd little show called the Sharmanka Kinetic Theater. Sharmanka is Russian for barrel organ and the show consisted of kinetic sculptures that move to music. The artist, Eduard Berdusky was living in Soviet-era St. Petersburg when he began creating these wooden sculptures in his 20's. He was living a small room in a communal apartment and would do menial jobs to make enough money to avoid the Communist control around him. He started connecting motors to his sculptures and voilá, we have the kinemats. The sculptures in the theater in Scotland aren't the ones he first created. Most of them were commissioned in 1989 to curate this show specifically. It's basically a room with 30 or more different sculptures. You walk from sculpture to sculpture as it lights up and the actions are set to different instrumental musical pieces. It's a very macabre and mysterious show. I don't really know how to explain it. Kind of haunting and grotesque but amazingly detailed and imaginative. I really enjoyed it. I only have one picture because after that one, I discovered there was a no photographing policy. Boo.

This is a terrible representation of the kinetic theater. This thing is huge and has so many moving parts that work together and also separately. It's pretty magical.

That pretty much capped off our Glasgowian adventure. We stopped at a vintage shop and Josh tried on a bajillion different leather coats. There are a lot of vintage clothing shops in Glasgow. It's trendy to be retro.

It suits him, doesn't it? But like I said, carry-ons...

And on to Edinburgh we went. We carved out two days for Edinburgh although I think I could've spent lots more time there. We started off at the Elephant House, which you may or may not know is the "Birthplace of Harry Potter". JK Rowling wrote a lot of the first book(s) here at this cafe.

squee!

The Elephant House

This is front and center, right when you walk in the door. Gave me a good laugh.

I went to the bathroom to wash my hands before we ate and was utterly stopped in my tracks. It was here that I discovered my kin--this is where all of the other crazy people who love Harry Potter come. And it was here that my unintentional Potter Pilgrimage began (yes, yes, I know I am completely ridiculous and I give you leave to stop reading because yes, it is super dorky.) Every square inch of available space was covered in signatures, sayings, thoughts, quotes, messages to JKR...

There's a Deathly Hallows sign on the door lock

People even signed the ceiling. And I still don't get how they did it. I mean, even if I stood on the back of the toilet, I don't think I'd reach. 

My personal favorite: "This way to the ministry". Although coming in a close second was, "I'd get sleazy for Weasley".

This is the view from the window in the Elephant House. I'm pretty sure that JKR must have sat right here, looking out of this window when she described Hogwarts in the books. This is actually Edinburgh Castle, but it might as well be Hogwarts. It's literally coming out of the rocks.

This building is near the Elephant House and Josh said it looks like Grimmauld Place. I concur.

The fog is so utterly dense in places of Edinburgh that buildings completely disappear. We decided that it wasn't too difficult to imagine Dementors when faced with all of this fog.

There was a real Tom Riddle. So naturally I wanted to go see his gravestone. I was not the only person in the churchyard looking for it by the way. Even though it was pouring and muddy and awful out. (I'm probably just telling you that so that you understand I'm not the only insane one out there).

My hubby is a trooper. He went with me to find the gravestone of Tom Riddle. Just look at the muck all over. (Side note: this was three weeks ago and his wheels are still coated with a layer of ick).

The capstone to my Pilgrimage: I met Hedwig!!! (Actually her name is Hazel and obviously she's not Hedwig because she's not a snowy owl, but I'm pretending). There was a guy on the street with an owl and I stopped to watch and he asked if I wanted to hold her. Naturally. He took my phone and took a zillion pictures of us with the owl. He kept coming up with different "poses". Also, like 20 people stopped to watch and take pictures of me with the owl. I so love to be the center of attention.

One of his "poses". Kiss Hazel, he says....he clearly doesn't know I'm a germophobe so I pretended. That seemed to make him happy (not sure about Hazel though...). 

 And thus ends my Potter Pilgrimage. At least until London where the Warner Brother Studios Harry Potter tour awaits and then you'll have to endure 492 pictures of the sets and costumes used in the movies. Just kidding. Sort of. I'm totally going on the tour but I'll try to keep the gushing to a minimum. 

I was on the phone with my accountant that day and he informed me that if he were in Scotland he'd go see all of the golf courses and taste all the Scotch he could. And I realized that I definitely couldn't leave Scotland without trying one of those things. (Not the golf). So we went on the Scottish Whiskey Experience. It is totally Chocolate World, except for Whiskey instead of chocolate. You ride in a whiskey barrel and learn how it's made. You even go through the "heating" part and it pretends to heat you up. And you get whiskey at the end. It's great. And I kind of like Scotch. It's kind of delightful. It's warm and smooth and makes my ears go hot (they were so impressed with my eloquence there that they've approached me about writing the descriptions for their brochure). There are four areas of Scotland where Scotch comes from and they all taste very different based on where they come from: Highlands, Lowlands, Islay or Speyside. During the tour, they gave us a scratch and sniff card that had each of the areas on it. You scratch it and smell it (duh) to get the scent of flavoring that comes from the different areas. Islay is really smoky because they use peat fires to make the mash. Speyside smells like banana (I don't remember why) but most of Scotland's whiskey comes from Speyside. The Highlands smell like vanilla and the Lowlands smell like grass. Each of those scents come through as flavors in the final products. 

The Whiskey Experience

The World's Largest collection of Scotch. I have never seen so much alcohol in one place. Interestingly, even though the bottles have never been opened, there are partial bottles and even an almost-empty one because the whiskey begins to evaporate over time. The bit that evaporates is called the "Angel's Share".

We're totally connoisseurs of Scotch now. 

Scotland's national beverage (pronounced like Iron Brew). It has something like 32 different flavorings in it so they say it tastes different every time you have it depending on what you've eaten or drank that day. I only had it once and that time it tasted like pink bubble gum. I'll stick to water.

Day two of Edinburgh we went to Edinburgh Castle. My very first castle! Super exciting. It's huge and sprawling and not quite what I expected. I was envisioning one large building with turrets and towers (and probably a knight or two). But it's this sprawling landscape of a keep with many buildings built on a really steep hill out of rock. We talked to a lady who worked there for a bit and she recommended to start at the top and work your way down so you don't have to walk back up the hill. Makes perfect sense. So we started at the Crown Jewels. I was definitely expecting a room overflowing with treasure chests of gold, rubies, sapphires...but it was a crown and sword and a rock. The rock is the Stone of Destiny which they use to crown royalty. When Queen Elizabeth dies, they will move this 300 pound stone down to England  to crown her successor (and then cart it back). It has a rather funny history, the Stone does. If I have the story right, the English defeated the Scotttish at one point in history and they basically stole the Stone because they knew it was important to the Scottish culture and monarchy. So they started crowing their own royalty with it. Lots of years go by and it's in Westminster Abbey. It's Christmas Eve in I think 1950 and while the Christmas service is going on in another room, a group of Scottish students decide to steal it and return it to its rightful place. They drop it and break the damn thing in two (it's since been repaired). But do they get in trouble?? No. Because it was a huge embarrassment for the police. It's kind of hilarious. The man at stationed by the Stone told us a movie was made about it. 

The front of the castle. Or 1/67th of it anyway.

The view from the Castle. I like this meshing of old, new and ancient in the city of Edinburgh.

Two of the windows in the chapel at the castle. I just thought it was so interesting what was deemed important to portray. On the left is a picture of Jesus in the boat with Peter. On the right is a man in battle. Equally important in that time. Such an interesting dichotomy.

One of the many stained glass windows in the Great Hall. This one is my favorite because even though you probably can't tell, in the bottom of the windows are words. They are names of important people. On the other side of the room is a window with the King James' and his son's names. There are names on all the windows. This window has "Bell the Cat". Crazy cat people have been around since medieval times!

Really big cannon that they used to use (note the kid with his head in it. I may or may not have done the same thing 12 seconds before that). And those are the cannonballs that Josh has his hand on.

Clearly animals were an important part of the culture even hundreds of years ago. This is a cemetery for the dogs of soldiers.

Just trying to express the magnitude of the castle. It's so big. My brother and I would have had a heyday in our youth here. We used to have these wooden swords we made and I can just picture us running all over the castle dueling and being little hellions. I'm sure my parents are super glad they didn't take us on vacation to Scotland when we were young.

The Castle outing ended with Afternoon Tea at the castle. I've had Afternoon Tea twice while in Britain and I've decided it's definitely the best thing ever. It's just snack time for adults. I don't know why we don't have this in the U.S. We really need to get on that. You get a pot of tea and a tray of 3 or 4 tiny sandwiches with the crusts cut off and then 3 or 4 tiny pastries. And the sugar for the tea is actual cubes, as in, 'one lump or two?' So great.  After that we walked to a monument that we saw from the top of the Castle. We really wanted to see it up close so we (Josh) found it.

It's actually a memorial to Sir Walter Scott. It's super neat looking. You can pay to go to the top but we got there after it closed.

The monument with a bagpiper! 

It wouldn't be a trip to Scotland if you didn't get to hear the bagpipes, right?! This guy was really talented. We stood watching for awhile, the crowd thinned and it was just us left. He stopped and asked us if we had any requests. We were fresh out of ideas of bagpiping songs so he asked where we were from. We told him and he said he had just the tune for us. He regales us with a very cheeky Yankee Doodle Dandy. Then this teenage boy comes running up and asks him if he's the guy that had been playing Star Wars earlier. Why yes, he was! He breaks into the Main Theme of Star Wars!

We ended our Scottish adventures with a late dinner in which Josh tried an authentic Scottish dish, Haggis which is a pudding made from sheep's pluck (I'll let you look that up later in case you're getting ready eat) and other ingredients stuffed into sheep stomach and cooked. Yeah. I didn't try that one. I did try Tablet, some sort of Scottish candy that I'm pretty sure is just sweetened condensed milk and sugar. My teeth still hurt. 

We were walking down the street in Edinburgh and saw this sticker on a phone booth. How crazy is that?! It's a Starrk Moon Kayak sticker! Which is a kayak place in PA! What are the odds?

And now we're back in London. It was a seven hour drive back to London from Edinburgh so we split it into two days because I just didn't want to drive that long. And we can never synchronize our bladders for bathroom stops so it would've taken us 12 hours anyway. We returned Arden to her home base and I think I might miss her a little bit. I finally got used to driving on the other side of the road. I'm pretty sure it's going to be weird to drive on the normal side again...