Harry Potter Studio Tour

The Warner Brothers studio where the Harry Potter movies were filmed sits just north of London. About a year ago, they opened up the sets to the public. I forced myself to wait 8 months until Christmas to buy tickets, since my family really wanted to come along, but it was worth the wait!

The entire experience was magical. Warner Bros. limits the number of people that can visit each day through advanced-purchased tickets, so it wasn’t crowded at all (unlike what I hear from Harry Potter World in Orlando). Plus the staff was very helpful and friendly; we could tell they were Potterphiles like us!

The tour began in a small cinema filled with HP movie posters from all over the world. It was fun trying to guess which country the posters were from while waiting for everyone to get their ticket stamped. Once everyone was inside and seated, we watched a short film introduction from Daniel, Emma, and Rupert. When they finished, the screen lifted and we realized we were outside the double doors to the Great Hall! A couple of lucky birthday kids got the honor of opening the doors so we could start our tour.

Once inside the Great Hall, a WB employee pointed out items like Rob Pattinson’s Hufflepuff uniform, the missing ceiling, and the professor’s costumes. Then she explained that the tour is self-guided. The average time spent in the studio is around 3 hours, but they did have one person take 9 hours to get through! There were a lot of fun things for kids to do, too, like find all of the golden snitches hidden around the studio, or complete the scavenger hunt. Like kids needed that stuff anyway! They were inside Harry Potter’s world!

We had a great time at the studio walking through the sets, drinking glasses of butterbeer, and even riding broomsticks over the (green-screen) Hogwarts campus. (Unfortunately cameras were not allowed in the green screen area but I will never forget Elizabeth, my dad, and me pretending to be wizards flying over London. Dad was definitely the oldest and biggest person to get on a broom, but he had the spirit of a kid!) 

We also learned a lot about movie-making, and all of the work it took to make the 8 films.  There was so much detail that went into the movie-making process, and even though most audiences probably never knew the half of it, it shows in the quality of the films. Here are some of our favorite tidbits:

The Great Hall was decorated for the holidays with Christmas trees and puddings and even crackers for each of the houses – like this one for Syltherin.  

For the first-ever scene in the Great Hall, the cast was served real food and the floating candles in the ceiling were real.  Well… after the hot wax started burning some kids and food spoiled after days of filming, the powers-that-be decided to use fake food and candles going forward.

David and me in the Great Hall.  You can see Harry’s first school uniform to my right and his last uniform on David’s left.  He grew from a tiny boy to a young man right before our eyes!

Not all actors had their hair styled for the movies.  In fact, most wore wigs.  From Snape, to the Malfoy’s, to Dumbledore and Sirius Black… and evil Bellatrix!

All of the books in Dumbledore’s office are British phonebooks rebound to look old.

Also inside Dumbledore’s office, the labels on the vials containing people’s memories are all hand-written. 

The animals inside the jars in the Potions classroom are from the London Zoo gift shop.

The Dursley’s home at 4 Privet Drive is based off of a house in Bracknell, the city outside London also famous for being the home of Dell UK.  Instead of continuing to drive out to Bracknell to film, they reconstructed the house on-set.

There were a lot of glasses made for Harry over the years, but Daniel Radcliffe took the originals with him as a souvenir after wrapping the series.  

Rupert Grint took the original ‘4’ from the Dursley’s home.

Hagrid was an animatronic!  For shots that didn’t require close-ups, a tall rugby player wore platform shoes and padded clothing to play the giant. He also wore an animatronic head to scale with the rest of his body and act as Hagrid’s double. Aragog, Hagrid's creepy pet spider, was also animatronic.

Other things you may have thought were CGI that were actually constructed were the revolving phoenix staircase, the Chamber of Secrets door, the Gringott’s vault door, and Mad Eye Moody’s chest.

Butterbeer is only sold in two locations in the world, and the WB Studios is one of them!  The recipe is a secret, but it tasted like cream soda mixed with butterscotch and topped with a thick, marshmallow cream.  Yum!

Diagon Alley was not only filmed within the studio, but also on the streets of London.

The Knight Bus was constructed out of two London double decker buses.

The painting of a young woman on the wall of the Gryffindor common room next to the staircase is actually a young Professor McGonagall.

The boy’s dorm room beds were built during the first film. Over the years, the actors outgrew them but new beds were never made. Instead, the cameramen just avoided any shots of their feet hanging off the ends.

Each main actor had a wand made of real wood just for them.  The wands were individually crafted to reflect the character they belonged to.

In order to give the behind-the-scenes cast some on-screen time, the paintings hanging around Hogwarts (like these two next to the sword of Gryffindor) are actually of people like the producers, writers, and other crew members that worked on the movies.

Working on a series of movies like Harry Potter must be a graphic designer’s dream!  They designed everything from party invitations to the Yule Ball…

…to the candy boxes inside the Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes joke shop.  The caption below the Marauder’s Map here states that the graphic artist that produced the map hand-wrote secret messages to the Graphic Department in it.

JK Rowling’s books and the movies are so closely aligned that I didn’t even notice that the rickety, covered bridge is never mentioned in the book.  It first appeared in the Prisoner of Azkaban and was eventually destroyed during the Battle of Hogwarts.

When you think of the different types of people involved in making a movie, you think of the actors, director, stunt-doubles, extras, makeup artists… but I’d never really given much thought to all of the architects and carpenters involved in building the elaborate sets. One section of the studio tour focused solely on all of the designs and models and carpenters that carefully constructed the various homes and buildings for HP.  And the sad thing is, most of these (like the Burrow pictured above) were destroyed by the final film.

In this same area, we saw a lot of various models of Hogwarts.  But as we walked into the final part of the studio, we came upon la crème de la crème –

Hogwarts! 

A giant model of the school is housed inside the WB studio.  The greenery around the castle is all real, and there are even lights inside and shadows of students walking the halls.  Close-ups of the castle were shot here, and the Battle of Hogwarts was strategically planned around the model. 

It was the perfect way to end the tour! If you are ever in London, this is one of my new favorite attractions that I highly recommend. Come and visit so I have an excuse to go back! 

Apres Ski

Before our trip to the Alps in January, I didn’t know how to ski. I’d never really wanted to learn, even though I’d had plenty of opportunities living so close to the mountains of New Mexico and visiting Minnesota every year for the holidays. But when Natalie and Guy (from our first British wedding) told us they were organizing a trip to the Alps, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to spend a week in the snowy mountains of France. So at the age of 28, I finally learned how to ski (and don’t worry, I know how spoiled I am to be able to say that I learned in the French Alps).

Our village for the week, Plagne 1800

Our group of 15 arrived at Gatwick airport to start our vacation, and got to know each other really well on the 2 hour flight when the airline scrambled all of our seats.  There was Guy’s sister, Sarah, and her boyfriend, Harry.  Then Guy and Sarah (so 3 Sarah’s and 2 Guy’s).  Natalie’s Guy was known as “Skinny Guy” all week while Sarah’s Guy was nicknamed “Fat Guy.”  Of course that was ridiculous because both Guy’s are in shape, not shapes!

We also met Andrew, who unfortunately hurt his knee the first day skiing and was out of commission all week.  Sarah’s sister, Dani, was also a beginner (thank goodness I wasn’t the only one!) and came along to learn.  Guy’s best man, Johnny, was there with his girlfriend Sophia, and her brother visiting all the way from Australia, Sam.  And last, but definitely not least, were Natalie’s best friend, Charlotte, and her boyfriend, Alex.

Once we touched down at Grenoble Airport (which we renamed Chernobyl Airport for its horribleness) we took a coach to La Plagne, near the border of Italy and Switzerland. 

Our chalet was really nice!  It was large enough for each couple to have their own en-suite bedroom,  a sauna to help rest our sore muscles after each day on the slopes, a large living room where we played a lot of Articulate, and a kitchen/dining room.  Charlotte "volunteered" to give us a tour!

There were also three chalet hosts that prepared a warm breakfast for us each morning, afternoon tea, and then a three course dinner every evening.  They also kept the place clean, and helped us with everything we needed while in France.

Every morning fresh baguettes arrived at the chalet from the local bakery

Our first dinner

On Sunday, Dani and I signed up for private lessons with the best instructor on the mountain, Christophe.  We wanted individual attention to progress faster, and we were too proud to sign up for ski school when every other student was 20 years younger than us…  Those kids learn young in Europe!  We kept telling ourselves, “If they can do it, so can we!”  But kids are fearless, more durable than adults, and much lower to the ground so their falls were never that awful.

Christophe was great!  After just two hours, we went from not even knowing how to put on our boots to gliding down the green runs, no problem.  After our lesson, we had lunch with the group.  After some hot chocolate (spiked with rum from Charlotte’s flask) and croque monsieurs, we wanted to get back out there and practice everything we’d learned.  Christophe had warned Dani and me to just stay on the green runs and not go with the rest of the group.  He also showed us where the bus stop was to get back down to the chalet, so we wouldn’t be tempted to just ski home.  But with 12 people egging us on, after lunch we ended up going down a virtually vertical blue run, Colorado, with the group.

At the top of Colorado.  

I was smiling on the outside, but inside I was so scared!

It was a terrible idea.  When we got to the top of the ski lift, we were at the top of a very steep mountain with no way down except the terrifying run.  Dani and I took it slow with her sister, Sarah, and Guy helping us down.  They were so patient with us, considering we just basically tumbled down the mountain.  It was awful, but once we got to the bottom, we found that the green run was easier than ever!

This is embarrassing to watch now.  I look like a baby deer learning how to walk... and I'm so slow!  During one of my many falls on CO, a kind older man with his wife handed me back my ski poles.  I apologized for wiping out and flinging my poles in all directions, saying it was my first time.  “Today, you mean?  Not your first time ever, right?”  Me: “Yes, ever.”  The grandfatherly gentleman and his wife looked down at me and said in their sweet British accents: “You’re mad! Mad!” and then sped off in disbelief.

David, meanwhile, was doing an outstanding job snowboarding!  He’d skied many times in the past, but this time around he wanted to try snowboarding.  Instead of taking lessons, he taught himself by watching YouTube videos.

We were so exhausted by the end of the first day that we didn’t want to wait to take the bus, so we braved another blue run, La Mine, to get home.  I felt a lot more confident then and only fell once!  But the blue turned into a short red towards the end.  I think it was all in my head, but the minute I stepped foot onto the red, I fell down.  I ended up just sliding down the rest of the run on my backside.

As you can imagine, Christophe was furious with us the next day.  He even scolded a few of our roommates when they called up for lessons.  On our second day, he took us down an easier blue slope called La Bergerie.  I loved this run.  It was challenging, but also fun, and long enough to do over and over without getting bored.

The tree lined path along La Bergerie was picture-perfect

However, at this point my shins were killing me.  No one told me how uncomfortable ski boots would be until we were picking up our gear.  After lunch it was too painful to continue, so I headed home with David to rest in the sauna.

On Tuesday before heading out, I took some ibuprofen, purchased second skin shin guards, and switched out my boots to help ease the pain in my legs.  Dani and I decided not to defy Christophe on Tuesday and just stuck to what we knew.  We had lunch with David at the top of La Bergerie and then headed back to take naps.  After all, this was a vacation and waking up early every day and skiing was wearing us out!  Being in a snow-plough position almost constantly was hard work on my legs!  Once Dani and I learned how to get a bit more parallel, it was easier on the knees and legs but I wasn’t comfortable going that fast down the slopes yet.

When everyone else got back, we had dinner with Guy’s family that was also in town and played our favorite board game, Articulate.  We learned that Guy and Sarah are made for each other, as they are both geographically challenged.  Who knew that Helsinki was in Hawaii… or was that Japan?  And the Gaza Strip is really in Egypt!  Ohmygosh, we laughed so hard during that game!  There were a lot of competitive people in the chalet, so our games could get intense!

Just before bed, we discussed heading out together as a group the next morning, since we’d been split up all week based on our skill levels.  I began to get very nervous when everyone started talking about taking on the glacier.  My confidence level was not there, yet.  Plus I had the glacier run built up in my head as 1,000 times worse than Colorado – a sheer, icy drop off the mountain range.

The view from the top of the glacier.  

Yeah, I think it was totally normal to be anxious.  

Later that night, I had a complete meltdown in our room, where I was crying, “I don’t want to be peer pressured!  Just support me if I say no!”  David’s response was a calm/tough love reply of, “It’s your decision, but I think you can do it.”  I stopped talking to him altogether after that.

I broke the silent treatment when we got on the ski lift the next morning up to the glacier.  After all, I didn’t want to die being mad at my husband! ;)

It turned out the glacier wasn’t that bad.  The entire group was so helpful.  Natalie helped me down some of the runs just to get to the gondola.  Guy dragged me along with his poles to get from ski lift to ski lift (as a beginner, you don’t use poles so I was struggling to shuffle from place to place).  And Sarah helped me down the actual glacier.  The glacier wasn’t all that steep; it just had a lot of moguls, so we took it nice and slow.  It was freezing up there, though!  I was crying because I was petrified, whereas Dani was crying because she was unbearably cold.  So when we finished, we headed back down to a nice warm lunch of tartiflette, creamy potatoes covered in cheese and bacon.

On our way up!

This was only our fourth day of skiing ever!  

Whew!  We did it!

That night, the chalet hosts were off, so we had dinner at a restaurant in town, Le Refuge, specializing in fondue and raclette.  Before we headed out, a water pipe burst in the sauna room, so all of the water in the chalet had to be turned off until the next morning when the pipe could be fixed. That meant no showers or flushing toilets. 

Even knowing there were water problems back at home, we all still ate so much cheese.  The portions at Le Refuge are ludicrous.  There is no way that two people can finish a giant pot of melted cheese, a bucket of potatoes to dip into the fondue, with a platter of meat, a basket of bread, and a giant bowl of salad.

David and me with our bucket o’ potatoes.

Sarah and Guy getting ready to cook their platter of meat,

while Alex is eyeing the cheese in the background...

The oozing of the raclette

Between the cheesy dinner and the broken plumbing, it was the perfect storm.

Thankfully the chalet owner found a part for the pipe that night and got everything fixed before we returned. 

To delay our arrival, we went to a local bar, Scotty’s.  Ew, that place was so gross I don’t even want to talk about it.  Let’s just say it was full of 18-year-old chalet hosts dancing on tables, making out in the bathrooms…  I think I was the oldest person in there, and I felt like it when I started complaining that my feet were sticking to the floor.  The bus driver that drove us home most definitely had a death wish careening down those mountain roads in the middle of the night, but Alex sang us a sweet rendition of Frere Jacques to calm our nerves.  We survived the terrible driving to get home in time for Charlotte's and Guy’s dance party.  Don’t worry, Guy, I’m not posting the video!  (I think I just heard his sigh of relief all the way from Exeter…)

On Thursday, David and I went snow-shoeing with Christophe and a few of his friends.  It was a three hour hike up in the mountains and we saw some really beautiful scenery.  The snow was so deep in places that Christophe told us to just jump off the hills.  We’d land in mounds of snow up to our waists, dig ourselves out, and continue on.  Snow-shoeing was really hard work, but I’m glad we did it. 

Snow-covered trees in the woods

Christophe with the ladies

We found a stream that wasn't completely 

frozen in the middle of the forest.

Christophe has an apple orchard outside his home, 

and brought his cider to share with us during one of the breaks.

I know this pic is blurry, but we wanted to 

show off our fashionable snow-shoes.

We had one last day of lessons on Friday and it was amazing to see how much we, especially Dani, had improved.  She'd gotten so good throughout the week.  She skied all day every day to build up her confidence.  She wasn’t afraid to go really fast, or fall down.  She’d just pick herself right back up and speed away.   I was still very cautious, so much so that Christophe had to literally hold my hand when teaching me to crouch down and ski parallel down the mountain.  The entire way down, I was yelling, “This is too fast –it’s too fast!  I’m not in control!”  He kept shouting back at me, “Commit!  Commit!  Commit!”  Oh, I miss that guy.

Thanks for teaching me how to ski, Christophe!

After our lesson, we skied to the lowest point of the resort, Montchavin, to meet up with the rest of the group.  It took 2 hours to get down to Montchavin, but it was one of the best days.  Dani and I took our time and the main run, called Mont Blanc, was so much fun.  Mont Blanc is the highest mountain in the Alps and we could see it all the way down this run.  The scenery was breath-taking and I definitely stopped more than once to just take it all in, and be thankful that I had conquered my fear of skiing to be there.

David in front of Mont Blanc.  Dani and I just happened to run into him on our way to Montchavin after he had gotten lost with Alex and Charlotte.

That night we had our Rubix Cube fancy dress party.  When Natalie and Guy first proposed the idea of fancy dress night, I thought we were going to have to pack David’s suit and one of my cocktail dresses, but fancy dress in Britain means costume party.

Andrew found the perfect shirt for the party!

For Rubix Cube night, we each started off wearing all of the different colors of a rubix cube – red, yellow, orange, blue, green, and white.  By the end of the night, we were meant to be in just one color. 

Sam came prepared with an amazing orange wig

Skinny Guy decided to get us started at dinner.  After our appetizer, he announced, “One dress change!  Go!”  Natalie warned him that it was too early and we should wait until after dinner, but he said just one change would be fine.  Well…. we all got carried away and after that one change, everyone started making behind-the-scenes deals to line up our next swaps.  Before we knew it, it was chaos!  The poor chalet hosts were trying to serve us dinner while everyone was running around ripping off their pants or pulling up their shirts to exchange.

 I have to say, the yellows were the most hilarious.  Guy’s and David’s outfits were great!  I love how David improvised a yellow jersey for his pants... I just feel bad for whoever lent him that jersey!

After we changed back into our normal clothes, we headed out to La Mine bar one last time.  La Mine was our favorite place to go for après ski drinks. 

Hanging out at La Mine with Charlotte, Natalie, and Sophia.  What am I doing, you ask?  Why, that's the awkward turtle?  Haven't heard of it?  Well as Charlotte would explain, "It's the awkward turtle!"  And that is all.

Harry stands out as the evil twin of "Where's Wally" (or Waldo as he's known in America)

One night a group of us decided to surprise half the group already at La Mine by cross-dressing, and then going to the bar in drag to see if our friends would notice. 

Somehow, even with our penciled-in mustaches and Guy's fake bosom, 

they didn’t suspect a thing…

Epic.

What a perfect way to end the blog!  And what an amazing week!  I learned to ski, David learned to snowboard, and we managed to do it all without any injuries (sorry, Andrew)!  With such a fun group of people, we made a lot of new friends and great memories!

New Boots for a New Year

We made it – we survived the apocalypse! 

Whew!  Now I don’t have to worry about finding out if Cam and Mitchell will ever get a baby on Modern Family, or finishing The Passage trilogy, or die wondering if anyone will ever start producing Twinkies again.  Seriously, American junk food companies, get on that!

We had grand plans for New Year’s Eve.  Well, I did.  Dad and me – we were on the same page.  Everyone else, not so much.  David wanted to stay home and finish up our week-long Walking Dead marathon.  He bought me Seasons 1 and 2 as a stocking stuffer so we forced the fam (including Mom) to watch a few episodes before bed every night… and even with all of the axes/shovels/gunshots to the head, Mom got hooked.  So she and Elizabeth were with David.

In the end, we compromised.

I signed us up for a fun-filled day of activities and by 5:00 we were too exhausted to even think about fighting through the crowds of thousands on the tube and along the river to watch the fireworks from Embankment.  So we went home, made Frito Pies, watched the Walking Dead, pausing it at 11:59 to spend a half hour watching the fireworks in our neighborhood and on TV while sipping our special Fortum and Mason champagne we’d been saving for a year.

We spent the morning of NYE on a Charles Dickens walking tour.  We met at the Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square and spent the next two hours wandering around central London.  We saw the foggy street that Dickens was walking down when he got the inspiration for Scrooge’s creepy door knocker in a Christmas Carol.  We saw the church his father and mother were married in, which we walk past all the time on the Strand and never knew about.  Dickens’ former office is now a coffee shop and the factory where he worked as a boy is London’s token TGI Fridays.  I’m sure the person eating the basket of onion rings near the window was asking himself why 20 people were standing outside staring at him… kind of took away from the history of the tour.

Besides Charles Dickens, we learned a lot about London in general from the tour.  Along the Thames, there is a bust of the man that cleaned up London’s sewer system, saving countless lives.  It sounds like a low job, but by cleaning up the river, he prevented who-knows-how-many epidemics from springing up.  To give you an idea of how disgusting London was a mere hundred years ago, the smell got so bad during one hot summer that MP’s were passing out during Parliamentary sessions.

We also saw the entrance to the Ministry of Magic from Harry Potter, one of the Turkish bathhouses Watson visited in the Sherlock Holmes’ novels, and an alleyway outside a theatre where one of the city’s most famous actors was stabbed to death after a performance.

In London, people don’t really put up Christmas lights on their houses or flats.  So instead of driving around looking at the lights (like we would do in the states), in Europe you walk along the streets to see the lights and store displays in places like Harrod’s and Harvey Nichols.  We started at my office on Oxford Street and made our way to Carnaby Street. 

From there, we walked to Regent Street and through Picadilly Circus to see the store windows at Fortum and Mason.

The day after New Year’s, David had to go back to work.  We woke up a bit earlier than usual also and headed to Buckingham Palace to witness the Changing of the Guard.  I’d never seen the Changing before (I know!) but I had seen the parade during the Queen’s birthday last summer, which was a lot better.

Usually in December and January, it’s pretty quiet around the city.  But this year with the Olympics, Queen’s Jubilee, and mild winter, there has been a constant flow of tourists.  The tube was really crowded, especially during rush hour, and it was Mom’s constant fear that she’d get stuck outside the closing doors and have to make her way home alone.  For those of you that don’t know my mom, she has a terrible sense of direction.  One time we found ourselves running to get into one of the Underground cars and as we were flying down the stairs, Mom was crying out, “This is my worst nightmare!”  Oh, Mama, you’re so silly!  We would never leave you…

We got to the palace about 20 minutes early and it was so crowded that we had to stand across the street.  After a couple of marches and songs from the band (including the theme to Mission Impossible – what?!), we made our way to the gates, but we were still a few rows back and didn’t get the best view.  Dad will just have to make another trip over here to see it again up-close! ;)

An hour later, we were walking through Hyde Park to get to Kensington Palace.  David and I had been before when it was being renovated, but now most of the wings are open so there was a lot more to see.  My favorite is still Queen Victoria’s apartments.   This summer, they’ll also open a Modern Royals exhibit featuring gowns worn by Princesses Di and Anne. 

Elizabeth kept her eyes peeled for a glimpse of Kate Middleton, but unfortunately she wasn’t home.  I think she spent that week with her family while William was on duty in Wales.  Sometimes she takes their dog, Lupo, for walks in Kensington Gardens or you can see them leaving/entering the palace in their car, but we had no such luck.  Sorry, Elizabeth!

We didn’t do it during their last visit, so during this trip, we had to have traditional afternoon tea.  We booked a slot at the boutique hotel Montague on the Gardens and got dressed up for our sitting.  When the staff first brought out the trays of finger sandwiches, scones, and desserts, the Kurzwegs were fooled into thinking it wasn’t nearly enough food.  But after a couple of hours, we were all stuffed.  As you finish each tray, the waitress will bring out more.  And with the unlimited tea, it was more than enough.  Elizabeth’s favorite was the raspberry macaroon and she was thrilled when she found out she got as many as she wanted.

On our final day, we used my Secret London guidebook to take a walking tour around St. Paul’s.  I picked up this book at work during one of our book fairs and it’s been great!  The book contains over 20 miles of walks around the city and they uncover lots of little-known places off the beaten path.  That’s how we found Windsor Castle pub in Notting Hill and on Friday, we had lunch at a pub on our route called The Olde Mitre.  

The pub dates back to 1546 and inside, in the corner of the bar, is a tree trunk that Elizabeth I danced around as a little girl.

Mom and Dad dancing just like Queen Elizabeth

The total walk was around 2 miles and on it we saw the Newgate execution bell, a crypt chapel beneath an old Roman Catholic church, a Victorian livery hall, and a medieval building preserved inside the basement of one of London’s top law firms.

In the Catholic crypt

Dad admiring the medieval home inside a modern office building

With all of the walking we did over two weeks, it wasn't a surprise to find Elizabeth’s boots were completely destroyed! 

Mind the Gap!

American shoes do not stack up against European ones, because almost everyone in America drives (instead of walks) to get where they’re going.  Elizabeth is one lucky lady, though, because Mom and Dad bought her new Hunter wellies to get her home! 

Just like Kate!

It was a great trip, and we were sad to see everyone go.  We had a lot of fun celebrating the holidays with the Houses and Kurzwegs!  To see all of the pictures from their visit, click here.