London

After our cruise, we spent three days in London.  Our first afternoon/evening, we visited Tanja's cousin Trond Erik, and his family (wife Karina, and sons Jan Magnus and Olav Trygve) who lived in suburban London. Karina's mom was there too - she took this photo!  It can be a little confusing since there were two Karina's:-) Trond Erik and Karina were great hosts and we had a lovely meal outside on their patio.  The kids loved meeting their second cousins, and it was great for the adults to catch up. 

Their boys were happy to have other kids to play with, and our kids had fun playing with their second cousins.  It is too bad we don't live closer.

 

 

 

One of our must do activities in London was to ride on a double decker bus.  There are many companies operating hop on/hop off tours of the city in these iconic buses so once we found one and figured out the protocol for boarding, we started our tour through the streets of London.  There was an audio tour recording we could listen to.  Derek and Lydia took many breaks from the "boring" tour and took their ear buds out to enjoy the novelty of being on top of an open-air double decker bus by trying to grab leaves or other activities.

 

 

 

In retrospect, I kind of wish we had gotten off the bus more often, but ultimately, I found the audio guide interesting and informative and we got decent views of all the sites by bus, so it wasn't that bad that we didn't get off very often.  I think we also would have run the risk of not being able to get seats together after reboarding onto a new bus. Karina also had gotten a splinter in her foot the day before, and walking was hurting her a little bit.

Here we are outside the Tower of London, the city's iconic castle.  We didn't pay the hefty price to go inside - the kids probably wouldn't have been that interested and I would have wanted to spend hours looking through the exhibits.  Originally built by William the Conqueror in 1078, the Tower is most famous for its role as prison and execution yard over the centuries, but it has been added on to many times and so has also served as armory, treasury, and palace as well.  One of the most famous exhibits inside is the Royal Crown Jewels.

The bus tour took us past Trafalgar Square with its big fountains.  This large public square has been used for gatherings of all types ranging from political protests and demonstrations (both violent and peaceful) to Christmas celebrations and families getting together.

Other sites we saw on the bus tour included the London Eye (the big Ferris Wheel) with Westminster Abbey and Big Ben in the background:

 

Tower Bridge (I was disappointed that apparently the best pictures of the bridge are taken from the River Thames and since we didn't take a boat tour, we missed that photo op):

 

and St. Paul's Cathedral (site of state funerals, royal weddings, and other big events since it was completed in 1710);

 

I found it interesting in our audio tour to learn about the City of London actually being only one square mile and confined to the downtown area which is mostly office buildings and few residents.  We were pointed to dragon statues and carvings around the perimeter of the City of London and once I knew that, I had fun doing my own scavenger hunt looking for dragons as we drove around.

 

 

We splurged on a trip to the Warner Brothers Studios for a tour of where they filmed many of the scenes for the Harry Potter movies.  Warner Brothers has built a couple sound stages in their larger studios complex specifically to house authentic costumes, props, and exhibits for the Harry Potter movies.  We spent all day there touring and learning some inside movie magic for the movies that brought the magic of the wizarding world to muggles like us.

This massive dragon greeted us as we entered.

 

By using forced perspective shots and different scales, the filmmakers were able to make Hagrid look like a half giant and much bigger than any of the other actors even though Robbie Coltrane (the actor who played Hagrid) is only 6 foot, 1 inch (for some scenes, they used a larger 6'10" body double wearing an animatronic head above him).  Derek sat in the seat meant for Hagrid in this table from his hut and looks much bigger than the rest of us.

 

 

This "corridor" from the movies showing the passageway from the Three Broomsticks into Hogwarts uses perspective tricks to make it look really long.  It's really just all the lines converging on the tiny window.

 

 

Some of the sets they recreated for tourists include the Great Hall with the candles floating in the air, the Potions classroom in the dungeon, and Dumbledore's office.

This model of Hogwarts was used for many of the shots focused on the school grounds itself.  Much simpler to use models than to build a full scale castle and school.

All aboard the Hogwarts Express at Platform 9¾ of King's Cross Station!  Tanja and the kids had visited the actual King's Cross Station where they have a photo op years earlier when we had a long layover in London.

 

 

 

An exterior model of the Burrow, home to Harry's friend Ron Weasley and his family, sits out in the courtyard of the studio.

 

The triple decker Knight Bus was not done with CGI.  The filmmakers built their own bus by taking parts from two double decker buses (like we rode) and they actually drove the bus carefully through the streets of London.

 

 

Hagrid's motorcycle with sidecar reminded me of being a kid riding in the sidecar of my dad's motorcycle.  Hagrid's could fly, at least in the movies.

 

 

 

At Sprout's Greenhouse, we got to pull out the mandrakes and repot them while they screamed.

 

Derek (and the other kids) had a chance to drive the Weasley's flying Ford Anglia just like Ron.  They were all pretty reckless.

 

 

Karina got into the Lestrange Vault at Gringotts Bank, but while she was looking for the Hufflepuff Cup horcrux, she activated the Gemino curse and all the treasure kept multiplying.

 

We made sure to see everything at the studio tour and it was interesting and fun.

We wanted to take in a play at the West End (London's version of New York City's Broadway).  Back to the Future was playing and that sounded like a fun one to me and Tanja, so we reserved tickets before we left on our trip.  During the cruise as luck would have it, Back to the Future was one of the movies available to watch in our rooms, so we made sure to watch it so our kids would understand the plot before we went to the play.  I was a little surprised how well the movie holds up so long after its original release.

I was also surprised how much cheaper West End shows are compared to Broadway.  Apparently, the UK subsidizes their theater productions so the tickets can be made more accessible to the residents (and tourists).  We all enjoyed the play.

We took a walk around the city to see some of the sites that we drove past on our bus tour but didn't get off.  Here's Derek in front of Westminster Abbey, built in the 1200s.

We walked past Big Ben (the iconic clock tower) at the Palace of Westminster where Parliament meets and timed it so we could hear its bells ringing.

Our last day, we wanted to go to one of the museums.  While the British Museum was probably our first choice, we couldn't get tickets for a convenient time.  We did manage to get tickets to the National Gallery and looked through some of the paintings, like this Sunflowers painting by Van Gogh.

The National Gallery is located at Trafalgar Square, so we took a couple pictures there at the fountains (the National Gallery is the building in the background).

 

President Macron from France was making a state visit while we were there, so the roadway leading to Buckingham Palace was lined with flags of the UK and France together.

 

Buckingham Palace.

 

 

London is such a big place full of different sites of interest.  To see even half of it would require more time than we had available, but I'm glad we had the opportunity to go.