A Weekend in London

In front of the London Eye

I'm heading down to the Ministry of Magic!

The Clock Toiwer

Jared and I went to London for a mini vacation.  He was able to take off a few days from work so we were there for four days.  We drove to Eindhoven and flew into Stansted Airport north of  London.  While in the Airport we realized we forgot the camera but we did have Jareds phone so we still took tons of pictures.  We took a cheap coach bus into the center of London and made our way on the trains back to our hotel to drop off our things.  Then we headed into the city.  It was raining but we went to see the London Eye which is the big Ferris wheel and Big Ben and the Clock Tower.  (you can’t actually see Big Ben, the bell but the clock tower is neat anyways).  So we walked down the street and saw a bunch of really neat buildings and stopped at a few souvenir shops.   Then we stopped for dinner at a traditional English pub and had fish and chips.  

It's Raining!!!

Jared and the tallest man

The Chair for the biggest Man

After dinner we decided to go to the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum.  We saw tons of different amazing things made of everything.  There were gum portraits, huge ships made of tooth picks, and different kinds of candy creating an incredible work of art.   We saw wax figures of the tallest man, and the biggest woman.  We saw tricky things that you wouldn’t expect and things that really made us think.  We bought special tickets that included a mirror maze and a laser game (although we didn’t know that when we bought them). In the mirror maze they make you wear gloves so there are no marks on the mirrors and you have to find your way out.  If you don’t walk with your hands in front of you, you end up walking right into the mirror.  It’s crazy.  Jared ended up running away and leaving me behind and finding his way out on his own.  But I couldn’t get out so he had to come back in and get me.  It was funny.  Then in the laser maze it was like mission impossible.  You had to climb over and under and around lasers to get to the end.  In the hard mode we only hit 6 lasers and that was with a backpack we were carrying hitting most of them. After leaving Ripley’s we stopped at the M&M store and then took a quick walk down Piccadilly and headed back to the hotel.

In the mirror maze

 

In the M&M store

The next morning we got tickets to the Making of Harry Potter.  We had seen posters when we got into London in the train stations and so we looked for tickets that morning.  When I looked for tickets there were none available for that day or the next.  I tried to call to get tickets but there were still none available.  They told us to keep checking online for spots to open up and after checking for about an hour two finally popped up.  We grabbed them right away and ran right out the door to grab breakfast and hop on a train.  While attempting to travel to the studio which should have taken less than 1 ½ hours we ended up hitting several delayed trains, long times waiting for the next trains, closed trains and bus alternatives. It took 4 ½ hours to get there and we missed our 2:30 tickets by a long shot.  Once we finally got there they said it didn’t matter that we didn’t go in at 2:30 and we headed right in.  We got these listening iPods where you press in a number and they give you a little more information about the things you’re looking at and it was really neat.  We got to see the sets where they actually filmed the Great Hall, the Gryffindor Common room, and Dumbledore’s office.  We saw tons of props like the horcruxes, wands, costumes, and the quibblers.  We saw the triple-decker bus, the house on 4 Privet drive, and all the huge chess pieces.  We also got to walk on Diagon Alley and see all the different shops from the movie.  The last thing we saw was a huge model of Hogwarts.  This is where they filmed all the aerial views of the castle in the movies.  It was really neat and definitely worth the 4 ½ hours it took to get there.

The cupboard under the stairs.

The main characters wands

Props they used in the movie

The invisibility cloak with a green screen underneath to show harry invisible

the Weasley's house

Griffindor Common room

Hagrid's hut

4 Privet Drive

 

By the time we got to the studio, went through the whole thing and got back we only had time to get a late dinner.  We stopped on Piccadilly again and found a little Japanese restaurant a friend told us about and then headed back to the hotel for some much needed rest. 

The next day was beautiful.  It was warm and sunny.  We went on a bike tour during the day just like the one we went on in Paris.  We saw the end of the changing of the guard, some neat monuments, Buckingham palace, Trafalgar’s Square, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben (again) and the London Eye (again) and some really beautiful parks.  We stopped at another traditional English Pub for lunch while we took a break in Trafalgar’s square for fish and chips again and it was even better than the first place.  At the end of the bike tour we asked the guide for a good place to go and he mentioned Camden Town. 

Buckingham Palace

Westminster Abbey

We took the metro and headed north and when we got off in Camden Town there were tons of stores. We walked over this bridge and looked down and there were hundreds of little stands that sold everything from food to clothes to souvenirs. They had so many different types of food from Chinese to Thai to BBQ. The stores sold cute dresses, interesting t-shirt, towels, or other random knick knacks. Then on the other side of the street there were hundreds of more shops inside.  We walked around for hours looking at all the shops. 

In Camden Town

Then we headed to Kings cross station to find Platform 9 ¾ from Harry Potter but we couldn’t get in to see it. Haha  We finally went to see the Tower bridge.  We were so tired we took a nap outside in the grass looking up at this bridge.  We went to go get Italian down the street and then headed back to the hotel.  We grabbed our bags and went to catch a bus to a different hotel close to the airport.  The bus we were supposed to take drove right by all of us standing there waiting and so an hour later we got on the bus and headed to the hotel.  The hotel was supposed to be attached to the airport and by the time we got there it was so late and we were very tired.  We went looking for the hotel and after walking all over the place we found out that we had to take a bus to get there.  It was a 10 minute ride.  (So much for being attached.)  We ran out of pounds and couldn’t pay for the bus ride. Thankfully the bus driver charged it to our room and we finally got back to go to sleep and 5 hours later we were up and back on the bus heading to the airport.  It was a really fun trip but a very tiring one because we were going, going, going the whole time.  Our next trip hopefully will be one on a warm beach where we do nothing but eat, drink, and get tans. 

The Tower Bridge