Stonehenge and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Hi everyone! I have to say I missed blogging! I’ve been in London for the past couple of weeks, I don’t have any other trips planned for the rest of the semester. But I do have some other exciting things happening! In a couple of weeks my lovely friend (and future roommate!) Hannah will jump the channel from Bilbao, Spain to visit me! I went to visit her back in February, which seems like ages ago now. I wrote a post about that as well so you can go take a look at it here. Another exciting thing is my day to Cambridge! This trip is through my program, just like the day trip to Bath. That will be such a fun wrap up to the semester. Then right after that my parents arrive! I’m so looking forward to seeing them again. The only downside to that is that my only exam for the semester is one of the first days they are here…

So for the main reason of this post, I wanted to share a few trips/events I’ve done in the past couple of weeks. Things haven’t been too eventful, I’ve gotten bogged down with final assignments. But I’ve been able to fit in some fun things! Two weeks ago, Emily, Cindy, Hannah, Carmen and I travelled to see Stonehenge. It was really fun! It took a little while to get there, we took a the Tube, a train, and a bus to get to Stonehenge itself. I was a little shaky on the last part, because I read somewhere that you can take the regular city transportation busses but when we arrived at the train station, There was no bus, so we had to take the special Stonehenge tour bus which was more expensive, which wasn’t too bad. We walked through the city of Sainsbury, which is a quaint town filled with twisting cobblestone streets and big market. It was so pretty! We then hopped on the bus to Stonehenge. We spent most of the day walking around the complex learning about the Prehistoric history that goes with the rock formation. The little museum was separated from Stonehenge itself, leaving an air of mystery to what it actually looked like. We took a short bus ride to the stones we walked around the rocks. I had an audio guide on my phone so I took my time, listening to as much as possible. It was such a nice day! Unfortunately though, Stonehenge kind of underwhelmed me. It was smaller than I thought. But it was still so amazing to see.

Now lets fast forward to this past weekend! My 21st birthday was on Thursday, 4/07. It was a lot of fun, I hung out with friends, had some drinks and watched a movie. My parents sent me cupcakes from Hummingbird bakery which was a really nice surprise!

Later that weekend, Sunday, was the day that I officially made it to Hogwarts. I went to the Warner Brothers Studios in Leavesden, which is where most of the Harry Potter movies were filmed. Honestly this was so fun! It was so interesting to see all of the different sets used throughout the movies, and the numerous props and costumes that were used. There was a ton of work put into these movies! I was in awe the entire time. Walking through the Great Hall was an experience all on its own. It was like I jumped into J.K Rowling’s books and I was in the wizarding world.

There was another portion where we got to see how a lot of the sets came to life through drawings and models. Then we literally stepped into Hogwarts! There was a gigantic model of Hogwarts that was created for the first movie and used for the rest of the series. A lot of the areal shots used were filmed with this model through a green screen, and the background was edited in during post production. That was the coolest aspect to me, and the entire school was right there in front of me. It was cool to see how the producers/editors/directors were able to make an entire world in just a few studio spaces.

I had my first butter beer (waaayyyyy sweeter than you think) and explored Privet Drive. And of course I grabbed myself a chocolate frog. It was such a great day! I even watched a few of the movies when I got back.

 

So that has been the past couple of weeks! I promise I will post more in the coming weeks, I have some cool posts planned!