Harry Potter: The Greatest Day of My Life

WB Studio Tour

Earlier this month I went to visit The Making of Harry Potter studio tour. The tour is up at the original Leavesden Studios which is about a 30 minute train ride northwest from London.

Tickets were scheduled for two hours blocks, and my time was technically from 1.30pm – 3.30pm. I ended up staying for five hours, oops.

I can’t even describe how amazing it was. The amount of detail that went into bringing JK Rowling’s world to life was incredible. As one of the, ahem, original Harry Potter fans having read Philosophers Stone in 1999  – I’M STILL WAITING FOR MY OWL – I was nearly weeping tears of happiness at being able to experience the closest I’d get to Hogwarts in real life.

London through my iPhone

A pictorial summary of my three weeks in London:

Summer berries

Brighton

Rooftop Pimm’s at Selfridges

Afternoon tea

Old friends

Garden party in Surrey

Kensington Gardens on a Friday afternoon

Quinoa salad in Notting Hill

Billy Elliot

South Korea v Singapore

National Portrait Gallery

Trafalgar Square

Lola’s cupcakes

Travelling on a budget

Wholefoods

Traveling solo

So I’m traveling solo on my way to Canada land (à la Jason Derulo). In my family, I am known as ‘the social one’ of my siblings – I don’t quite know how this happened considering I used to be told off as a nine year old at school for spending too much time in the library and not enough time outside making friends. The month before I left was a flurry of catch ups and as my sister Eleanor kindly pointed out, “You’re going to find it sooo hard travelling by yourself. I bet you don’t know how to be alone!”

Challenge accepted. Luckily I get along quite well with myself (I would hope so).

Great things about traveling alone:

London observations

Oh, London.

It has been three and a half years since we last met and yet you don’t change.

– Smokers. Everywhere. Londoners must have missed the ‘smoking is bad for you’ memo. Look, I’m all for ‘freedom of choice’ when it comes to nicotine having gone through that stage myself, but the smell of smoke is everywhere. I can’t even begin to imagine what it would have been like pre-2007.

– Street drinking encouraged. Outside the pub-on-every-corner there is an overflow of patrons socialising, smoking, or even sitting on the kerb with their vodka-cranberries. It seems licensing regulations (do they even exist here?) are not at all enforced. Perth police would have a field day.