Day 4 - Studio Tour

Today, we went to the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour at Leavesden Studios, outside of London. We managed to find all the correct trains and buses at the proper times (we were actually nearly an hour early for our scheduled tour) (“but really, we were only functionally half and hour early because we had to stand in line for things. It’s important to mention. And if you want to be British, you have to say that we had to queue for things.” –Miel).

Diagon Alley

The tour started with the Great Hall, which was awesome. We heard about the various producers, writers, and directors of the movies, got to see many costumes, props, and sets (including the Gryffindor common room, the boys’ dormitory, Dumbledore’s office, the Burrow, the Ministry, Hagrid’s hut, the Potions classroom, Privet Drive, and Diagon Alley). Miel mentioned that it was weird to see all of the rooms as tiny, separate sets rather than part of a huge castle as we’d imagined them. As Props Mistress for various Upper School productions, I was particularly impressed with the number and quality of their props and aspire to their greatness (and their budget).

A portion of the props cage

Miel & Butterbeer 

I made Miel try butterbeer even though she was skeptical, and she says it was “actually, like, decent…don’t put that quote in” so there you have it. Overall highlights were the Knight Bus, the concept drawings (and paintings…they did like full-blown paintings for some concept artwork, which were amazing), the white card models of sets, and the full model of Hogwarts at the end of the tour. This model was detailed and realistic enough that they actually used it as the Hogwarts shown in the movies, until the last movie, when they had to blow up the castle with CGI.

Model of Hogwarts (one of many shots of many angles)

We made our train back to London, picked up our luggage, and made it onto the Eurostar. It was incredibly exciting for Miel to hear people speak French, even though she’s been making comments like “EVERYONE here is French!!!” and “ANOTHER French family!!!” since we got to London. Miel also wants me to clarify that from the Eurostar, we did actually make it to Paris. After some trouble with the Metro (and some help from some nice French youth), we made it to our hotel. Apparently, Gabriel García Márquez wrote El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (No One Writes to the Colonel) in this hotel, which is exciting even though I haven’t read that particular novel of his. Also, we would like to mention that our chair is now in the closet so that we could fit both our suitcases on the floor without blocking doorways.

We’ll start to explore Paris tomorrow. Off to… sleep in our hotel room so we can have more adventures tomorrow worthy of sharing with our LOVELY READERS.

The two of us at Number 4, Privet Drive

- Sara & Miel