Christmas in England part 15: Harry Potter Studios!!!

This day of the trip was the day all my dreams came true. It will just be known as "Harry Potter Day."

As a Christmas present, my parents told us we would be visiting the Harry Potter Studios. And we screamed. Jessi, Kels, and I are GIGANTIC Harry Potter fans.

We woke up early and left our flat in London. I was really, really sad to leave London. Our trip was cut a bit due to such awful weather and so many people being sick, and I loved that city. I can't wait to go back and explore it more. But Harry Potter is probably the only thing that made me feel excited about leaving!

I didn't bring in my real camera, but I took about 900002673 pictures on Nathan's cellphone. I was in Heaven. If you've never heard of Harry Potter Studios, it's all the original sets, props, costumes, etc. from the movies. It's full of behind the scenes videos and everything Harry Potter you could ever dream of. I might have geared up during some of the little films. I'm crazy. And I don't care.

 Hard to tell, but this is the mirror or erised.

 We tried butterbeer! It's basically just cream soda.

 Diagon Alley! It was so cool!

The end of the tour was the absolute best part. We walked into a section where all the art and design for the movies was displayed. There was a video where Emma Watson told us there would be a surprise at the end. I believed her, because Emma is perfect. Sure enough, after a few twisting hallways with beautiful artwork and small scale models, we rounded a corner and saw this:

Pictures do it no justice. This was a MASSIVE scale model of all of Hogwarts and the grounds. They had this beautiful music playing and perfect lighting and I literally felt like I had walked into a different world. I stood and starred with my mouth open for what was probably a few too many minutes. It was incredible to see the world I loved so much as a child, and adult, brought to life in front of my eyes.

There were a bazillion awesome things in the gift shop, but it restrained myself to a deathly gallows keychain. What I really wanted was the Elder Wand replica that cost 300 pounds. But I shouldn't have that much power. I would kill too many people.

The rest of the day was spent driving in awful traffic back to Swanland and just relaxing at home. Then we watched the first Harry Potter movie and Ava did a dance with her sticky hand toy.

The moral of this story is: if you are a Harry Potter fan and find yourself in England, go to the Harry Potter studios and have your mind blown.