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!