London Baby!

At the beginning of last month, my bestie & I hopped on a National Express from Cardiff to London.

The trip had been booked for about 6 months in advance so we were both pretty excited.

The night we arrived we went to see Simple Plan (something Amy had wanted to do since her mid teens, we're 23/24 now) at HMV forum in Kentish Town.  I'm personally not a big fan, but they put on a really good, upbeat show.  An added bonus was that We The Kings were supporting, although we missed a little of their set stuck in the queue outside.  All in all, it was a very fun evening!

HMV Forum by night

We The Kings were awesome :)

Simple Plan!

Chuck & David

Pierre (aka future husband of one Miss Amy Rees)

Jeff/The Bald One

She couldn't resist buying a (very over-priced) T shirt...

and I couldn't resist trying it on! (over my clothes & bag!)

 The next day was the main event, we got a train from Euston to Watford Junction and embarked upon THE HARRY POTTER STUDIO TOUR!

We were early, so we were stuck waiting anxiously in the lobby for quite a while until our time slot.  Thankfully, there were plenty of photo opportunities there, and we managed to resist actually going into the gift shop before the tour itself!

The bus that takes you from the train station to the tour

Outside

Inside

Weasleys :)

A large part of the gift shop is dedicated to Honeydukes sweets

The Cupboard Under the Stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey

When it was finally time to go in to the tour, we were led into a room where we were given a little intro/background to the Harry Potter series and were then taken into the 'cinema'.  Here, we were shown a film of Daniel, Rupert & Emma, talking about the time they'd spent making the films and so on.  During the film, they were stood in front of the Great Hall doors, and once the film had ended, the projector screen dropped, and we, the audience, were left in front of those very doors!  A very clever way to begin the tour, if you ask me.

You only get a certain amount of time in the Great Hall itself, but it is truly breath-taking.  From then on, the rest of the tour is self guided and you're allowed to be in there for as long as you'd like.  We were there around 3 hours in total, I think, and I took around 300 or so photos before my camera died on me :(  If you're going and like taking photos as much as I do, then I'd definitely recommend taking a spare battery pack for your camera!

Anyway, here are some of the many photos I took:

Great Hall Doors

Great Hall

Doors inside

Fireplace with all the house emblems

Gryffindor!

Professors

Ice sculpture from the yule ball (amaaazing)

The Sword of Gryffindor

Hagrid's Hut

Weasley's kitchen

Bad Guys

Ministry of Magic

A selection of the smaller props that were used in the films

Hogwarts Bridge

Tom Riddle's grave

Half way through the tour, there was Butterbeer! It was pretty strange if I'm honest! But not horrible, well worth a try!

They really do save the best 'til last on this tour.  The final room you visit contains the Hogwarts scale model, which is nothing short of breath-taking.

I took so many more photos than this and have had a job trying to chose which to include here.  It was an AMAZING day, and I would say to anyone that's a fan, you need to go! The tour itself is really good value for money at under £30 for an adult ticket.  However, if you're planning on buying gifts and so on, you will need to save and take lots of money as the gift shop is extremely expensive.  It doesn't detract in the slightest from the experience though and I can't stress enough how excellent it truly is.  Just go, and see for yourselves!

xxx