Mediterranean cruise and European adventure - Day 15 - London

London (again)

We had to wake up a bit early to go to the airport for our flight. We had something quick to eat at Dru’s place and then Dru drove us to the airport. We were fairly early to arrive so we had a little bit of time to have a little more food there before it was time to board our flight. Unfortunately once we were boarded, we sat on the tarmac for nearly an hour because an incoming flight had blown a tire on landing and was now disabled on the runway. They finally decided that they would be able to use half the runway, but then we had a long queue of planes so we had more waiting.

The flight wasn’t too long and we were able to buy our train tickets on board so that we could save a little time once we arrived at London Luton airport. Once there, we had to walk forever around a bunch of construction to take a bus to the train station and from there we took the Thameslink to St. Pancras station and where we had a quick snack in a cafe in the station. I didn’t want to have a full lunch as it was already late and we needed to eat early dinner since we had 6:30 tickets for the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour.

We arrived at St. Pancras and walked to our hotel from there, during which Emmaline was feeling a bit cranky and tired of traveling. She also wasn’t in the mood to haul her suitcase so I made the 15 minute walk dragging both of them. We arrived at our hotel, checked in and I organized things for the next day’s travel, since I knew we’d potentially have a late night.

We left the hotel and headed over to King’s Cross station where we found Platform 9 3/4 which was mobbed with tourists waiting in a long line to take a picture. Between people, I snapped a quick photo with nobody in it, then we went into the shop and looked around. We didn’t see anything we couldn’t get anywhere else so we left and jumped on the Underground to head one stop to go to Giraffe restaurant for a bite. We went to a different Giraffe over by Victoria station on our first trip through London. Emmaline loved it so much that I found us another nearby. We had a nice…lupper? linner? Anyway, we had a meal that was between lunch and dinner and then hopped the Underground over to Euston station to take a regional train to Watford Junction. From Watford Junction, we took a shuttle bus to the Warner Brothers Studio.



We arrived early to the studio. They said allow 90 minutes and I did, but we made it easily in 60 minutes. I guess we just got lucky with the trains running right when we arrived at each station. We got our tickets and headed inside. They took in small groups to a little theatre where we watched a little movie that talked about the making of the movies and it had clips from all the movies, then the screen parted to reveal the doors of Hogwarts. The doors open and we beheld the Great Hall. I think the entire crowd of people gasped. It really was exciting!




After the great hall, we entered a large warehouse-like area full of various sets, props, costumes, wigs and more. I took far far too many photos and I’ll only put a small handful of them here. We walked from set to set listening and watching videos on the digital guides. Emmaline wanted to listen and watch every audio file and video and examine every prop, costume and set in detail. Like at the Tower of London, she wanted to leave no sign unread, no detail unnoticed. Which is great, except that after we were there for 2 hours, I asked one of the employees how far along we were and she said we weren’t quite halfway. I must have made a surprised expression because then she told me the digital guide was a total of 5 hours if you listened and watched everything and that didn’t include also reading all the additional signage. Since it was already 8 PM, I decided we needed to pick up the pace!










At 8:30 we came upon the snack bar and sat down for some butterbeer ice cream and a bag of crisps. From there we were actually nearly to the end and from that point we ditched the audio guide all together. It had a ton of really cool information and videos and behind the scenes stuff and I would have loved to have seen it all, but in way, I feel like it took away from looking at all the things on display. It would have been cool if there were a way to access those items on a DVD or app or something after coming home. At the end of the tour is the huge model of Hogwarts that they used to film a lot of the wide sweeping exterior shots. Next to the model they had really neat videos showing the raw footage they shot of the model and then how it was incorporated into the final cuts of the films.



We ended the tour in the gift shop (of course) where Emmaline chose a couple of items for herself and an item for a friend. Exhausted, we climbed back on the bus to head back to Watford Junction and make the return journey to London. The entire experience was incredible and worth every penny we paid (which was not a small amount). If you should find yourself headed to London and you’re a Harry Potter fan, I very highly recommended it. It was a ridiculous amount of fun and just so fantastic to see all the real stuff from the movies. However, it sells out months in advance as they don’t allow many people inside at once (which was lovely) so buy tickets in advance. I actually really liked going late in the evening as there were fewer and fewer people as we went through. In fact, they were closing many sections behind us as we made our way through.

We were really tired by the time we got back to the train station and the walk back to the hotel was tough, even though it was only about 10 minutes. We climbed into bed and both of us fell asleep instantly. The next morning we would meet back up with Roger at the airport and fly home to Austin. I’ll write up one more entry with a brief rundown of our trip home and some final thoughts about the trip as a whole.

Click here for our travels home and my final thoughts.