Warner Bros Studios Harry Potter Tour!!!

Alright, as already mentioned, I am a Harry Potter fanatic and living in England only adds to the problem. On Monday, May 19th, we made our way to the Harry Potter movie set!! This was beyond exciting, obviously. I will try not to overload this post with photos since I did take a few (I also don't want to ruin the whole experience for others). It's only about an hour and a half drive from us and was a really easy drive on really nice roads!! Yay! We had a 2:30pm slot for our tour and left early to be sure to arrive on time.

We finally arrived at the studios and made our way inside. The entrance lobby had pictures of all the cast members and was very nice. Eventually we meandered our way to the line and waited very excitedly. The line itself held a surprise that just showed how mind blowing this studio would be: Harry Potter's cupboard under the stairs!

 Now if that doesn't get you excited to see the rest of the site, I don't know what would. After making it through the ticket line, we finally made it into a room where the kept the group. After a speech, we were herded into a small film room. They had a film that gave a brief introduction and served to get us more excited. When the film ended, the screen moved and there were the doors to the Great Hall! Pretty sure I had tears, I kid you not. They flung the doors open and there was the Great Hall, even more amazing than I could have imagined. They had two table set up and outfits from all the houses and professors. It was beautiful.

Alright, I promise I am keeping these photos to a minimum. There were just so many awesome things and I took a billion pictures. After the great hall, we continued into the rest of the tour (only the Great Hall was guided). The first area was indoors and had most of the indoor sets, props, and costumes. Here are just a few of the billion pictures I took of this section. By the way, here is an interesting tibit for you all: apparantly I was super excited and kept running off in every direction. Poor Lee kept coming up to me and saying "I lost you. I couldn't find you!" I think he said that more than anything else that day. Also, at the end, he said "I should have kept you on a leash." Whoops!

Harry Potter's outfits from the last movie.

Cast member's wigs

The invisibility cloak!

Ron's bed

Gryffindor commonroom

All the major characters' wands!

Staircase to Dumbledor'es office!

Dumbledore's office!

Horocruxes

Door to Chamber of Secrets

Hogwarts' door. You see this locking in Prisoner of Azkaban

Hagrid's Hut

The Burrow

The Weasley's clock!

Magic Is Might statue

I have this book as a journal!

The potions room

Lilly's letter

 After getting our fill of the indoor sets, we made our way outside. They had Harry Potter's childhood home (see the resemblence to Lavenham?), the Knight Bus, 4 Privet Street, John Riddle Sr's grave, chess pieces,  and the Hogwarts bridge. They were also selling Butterbeer so of course, we had to try that (not so much my taste, by hey, still great)!

Hogwarts Bridge

Lee drinking a butterbeer

Next we headed back indoors for more props, makeup and special effects. We got to see all of the creatures!

 We also got to see artwork from the films. There were everything from full color paintings to sketches in order to bring the world of Harry Potter to life. So much skill involved.

Hogsmeade was the next attraction! Oh my gosh, this was absolutely amazing! The detail they put into everything was impeccable. I cannot even imagine the talent of everybody working on these sets.

 The very last set was Hogwarts itself!! The lighting kept changing for the different times of day, hence our picture sequence! Again, so much detail. It was great seeing it all up close! I always knew Hogwarts was REAL!! I am still waiting on that letter, I must have gotten a dud of a post-owl.

Alright, there actually was one last room. We were led into a wand room! Soooo many cases they made!

Everything had so much detail! I took over 300 pictures so these are obviously only a tiny fraction. It was all just so amazing, I couldn't help myself. I definitely recommend visiting here as the sets are beautiful and it is great to see all the tiny details and behind the scenes that goes on for movies. It took us a little over three hours to go through everything but you have all the time in the world! 

Lavenham

Today we headed out to Lavenham (ahem, Godric's Hollow). It is an adorable small town that has changed very little from Medieval times. It is very well preserved and I loved the half-timbered houses. But to me, the best part was that it was used as Godric's Hollow in the movies! The actors never actually went but got green screened in. It is still awesome to me! If you didn't already know, I am a slight Harry Potter fanatic so I plan on seeing many more Harry Potter sites in England! The first few pictures are from the Lavenham Guildhall, also known as Harry Potter's birthplace. They used this site for the basis of his home, way too cool!

^This picture is the best one showing Harry Potter's home inspiration

Now that we are on a HP theme, we will continue it. Another filming location in Lavenham was the De Vere House. Harry and Hermione walk by it Christmas Eve. It was near the graveyard and had a Christmas tree in the window.

Next are just a few other pictures from around town! Sadly, not HP related.

 ^Can you see the tilt of this building? It's leaning toward the street! A lot of buildings were like that.

 ^Yes, we are definitely in England.

 ^Check out those crooked buildings! What craziness!

^^So much tilting going on!


Alright, that's it for today! Keep tuned for our future adventures that may or may not include falconry...  ;)

Visiting Ely

Today we finally got out to explore a little bit. In other words, we finally feel comftorable enough with driving to venture...only hit a couple curbs. We decided to go to the town of Ely (pronounced ee-lee) because we heard they've got an awesome cathedral.

So we actually live in England's version of the boondocks. Like there are great towns but they separated by large amounts of farm lands so we had a nice 45 minute drive through the countryside to Ely. By the way, the roads here are made differently, in other words, they have no shoulders. That makes the roads really skinny so you really have to make sure that you are in the middle because on the sides are ditches. And I am not taking American style wimpy ditches, no, these are 15 feet deep and filled with water so a bit scary. Anyways, it makes for an interesting drive.

We finally made it to the town and headed for the Ely Cathedral which was giant. It was built in Gothic style in 1109 and took 300 years to build. Now bear with me with these photos, I am still learning my camera but I think they all turned out pretty good!

This cathedral has some of the most beautiful stained glass that I have seen. The windows were massive and they had windows from basically the entire time the place has been around. They also had a stained glass museum but no photos were allowed in there. In the museum, they had stained glass from 1100's ish to present day. Here are a few examples of the beautiful stained glass we saw.

To me, the most breathtaking part were the ceilings. They were hand painted and done with the utmost detail, honestly I could have sat all day just staring at them.

^One of my favorite pictures!

See what I mean about the ceilings? They're great! We ended up going on the "Octagon Tour" which ended up being a great choice. Back story first: I am not a fan of heights, I finally admit this...it took me a long time to say it but it doesn't stop me from doing anything I want to do, this tour being one of them. We had a great tour guide who was very knowledgeable. He took us up into one of the towers. There are 165 steps to get to the roof and they get very narrow. Walking the first few flights were fine but then the steps got to be like a foot wide so some people had to go up sideways! They curved up the tower in a spiral staircase and sometimes just had a rope for a railing. I was holding on tight for fear of a mistep. But it was totally worth it and wasn't too scary for me (although, I did make sure Lee was always around to catch me!). The views were gorgeous from the top, we could see for miles and seeing behind the scenes stuff was great.

Alright, one last picture of the Ely Cathedral for the road!

After all this time in the Cathedral, we got pretty hungry so we headed to a pub, of course. We had to ask about how to order food! Apparantly at this one, you ordered your drinks from the bar, sat yourself then ordered you food from the bar and then they brought the food to you. So a little different than what we are used to. Lee had fish and chips (he LOVED them!) and I had steak and ale pie (kind of tasted like a beef pot pie). We had to try the English food! After eating we went to see Oliver Cromwell's house. After the Civil War in England and the King was killed, Cromwell became the head of state as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England until his death. Read up on it, it's an interesting story. But his only remaining home lies in Ely so it was pretty cool to see.

It was a great day! We had a lot of fun and makes us so excited for all of our future adventures in Europe!

We found a house!

We found a house! It was a super long day. We looked at 12 houses so it was slightly overwhelming at all of the choices. Everything from country homes to small town living to big towns. Our future home is called Bury St. Edmunds and it is wonderful. The town has everything you could want. And our terrace home (townhome) is very close to town center, about a ten minute walk to get to the very center. But we still have stuff to do right in our area too. Within twenty minutes we can even get to the train station so this location gives us basically all of Europe in arm's reach! It's about 30 minutes to base, maybe a little less so we are very happy to get out of that area a little bit. Check out the town, it has so much history and awesome historic sites.

Our home itself is a Georgian terrace home that is remodeled. It has the wonderful old facade but it really updated inside. We have 2 fireplaces, living room, separate dining room, 2.5 bedrooms (I say 2.5 because it's technically 3 but the third is so tiny that I plan on making it a closet) kitchen with all the amenities, one beautiful bathroom with a rainhead showerhead and a large backyard with patio. It is very rare to find a backyard as large as the one we have in such a central location. We plan to get some outdoor furniture and a grill, and maybe I will put in some potted plants but we will see how that goes.

Also, our furniture arrived today! So there won't be much delay in when we move in to when we have furniture. We could not have timed that better! Hopefully we will be in the home next Friday so everything is falling into place. I will post pictures of our house when we actually move in!

The BIG Move

Alright, the big move has come! We have officially moved to England and it is an adventure! We arrived Sunday and there is so much we still need to do. The flights went well and were of course super long! I'm glad I get to avoid that flight for a while! The worst part is that we are stick inside a tiny room with only a fridge and microwave which makes for interesting meals.

 Today we are going to take another look at a car we both like, a 2005 Rover 75 and are pretty excited about it. And tomorrow, we are going house hunting which we are beyond excited about! This weekend, I think we may make our way to go see something (not sure what yet).

Now the driving part over here is a little intimidating but what we both realized is that it's the nerves that is the worst part. The driving really isn't bad! We just have to remember that the driver has to be the one closest to the center line and we are good. Also, the roundabouts are getting better! We were both terrified about those! But now that we understand what are actually supposed to do, they don't seem as scary! Lee has been doing most of the driving but now I have started as well. I am quite proud of how well I am doing.

Sorry, no pictures yet!

UPDATE: We bought the car! It is beautiful! It is in great shape, had all the paperwork needed and then some! It's nice to have some peace of mind that we have done something right. It is so quite and is a very smooth ride. We are going to buy a new CD player for it and get an oil change.

I also just did my first alone drive! It was to go get the car and of course I forgot my cell phone so I was on my own. But I only got turned around once so overall, it was great. It doesn't even feel like I really even have to think about what side of the road to be on and roundabout are easy. So we are adjusting well! I will make a new post tomorrow after our house hunting search!