London Trip Day 1

Last summer, we took a stop over in London on our way back from India. We spent 4 days in London. It was very tiring but, we enjoyed a lot. The kids had so much fun riding the underground train (tube), the open top buses and taking a ferry ride on the Thames river.

When we were planning our trip to London, I really wanted to go on the Harry Potter tour and there were many tours available and I was not sure which one we would like. With two kids, I did not want to take long tours. But then I saw the Warner Brother’s studio tour. By the time I read about it and finally decided to buy the tickets, everything was sold 🙁 I was very sad that day. Then, just because I was mad at myself for not purchasing the tickets earlier, and also because I was bored in India, I went to the Warner Brother’s studio tour site again. This time I saw there were tickets on some days which were not available previously. That gave me a faint hope that maybe something might open up on the days we would be in London. I checked it every morning and finally, I was able to get the tickets 🙂

On the day of the tour, we went to Watford station by tube (London’s underground trains). Then we got on the studio tour bus to get to the studio. It was a 10 – 15 min ride. We were much earlier than we needed to be. But, that was good because the kids were hungry and we had some time to go to the cafe. After the kids had some snack and juice, we finally went inside. I was just like a happy kid who got her ice cream 🙂  I loved everything and we took tons of pictures. The kids of course were not interested in anything there initially. They saw the flying car from the Chamber of Secrets and Sanjay was disappointed that he could not ride in the car.

Sarath was bored initially and kept whining about going back to the hotel. After the initial video and some intoduction, we were on our own inside the great hall of Hogwarts 🙂 It was a small hall. Much smaller than what it appears to be in the movie. I started explaining to Sarath what everything was, the different houses of Hogwarts etc and slowly he got interested. We saw the sets of Gryffindor common room, the mirror or Erised, Dumbledore’s office, potions classroom (where there were a couple of potions stirring themselves), Hagrid’s hut, the flying motorbike, Diagon alley, Privet drive, Harry’s house at Godrics Hollow, The Burrow (where they had displayed the self washing pans, self knitting sweater etc) and a lot of other items as well. It was wonderful. Sarath was so excited to see pans washing themselves, iron box ironing by itself, potions stirring themselves etc. He actually thought that was all actual magic and I did not have the heart to tell him otherwise.

They had a display of how they filmed all the flying on broomsticks and the flying car. We can go and get a picture and video of ourselves flying on a broomstick. We just sit on a broomstick which actually has a seat on which we can sit. it is stationary and we just move to the side as if we are riding. The actual video will have all the background and when put together it will be as if we are flying on a broomstick all over London 🙂 Myself and Sarath did that. My video did not come out nicely but Sarath’s did. So, we purchased some pics of me and Sarath on a broomstick and also Sarath’s video on the broomstick.

After this, Sarath started liking the tour and got very excited. We even saw the Knight bus and Sarath was just so excited to see a triple decker bus in a purple color 🙂 At the end I was very happy that we got a chance to go to the tour and Sarath got so interested that he asked me “When can I read the first Harry Potter”? I told him he can read it when he is 7. But, I think I am going to wait for another year to let him read the books. I just hope he has as much fun as I had while reading it.