The UK Diaries Part 5: WB Studio Tour London

My second Harry Potter post for this UK trip is the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in Leavesden, the site where the Harry Potter films were made for ten years (and currently where the Fantastic Beasts films are being made). The Tour features the set, props, costumes, special effects and visual effects, creature effects, and the art department from the Harry Potter films.

At this point, we’d already gone to a John Williams BBC Prom (wherein we got teary-eyed within the first few bars of Hedwig’s theme), visited the House of MinaLima and watched the Cursed Child a few days before, and even met Evanna Lynch and Dan Fogler (but I’ll save those stories for another post). This time, on July 31st, we celebrated Harry Potter’s birthday and our last full day in London (we were leaving for Scotland the next day) at the WB Studio Tour.

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The UK Diaries Part 4: Baker Street

(I’m back with the UK Diaries, this time featuring Sherlock Holmes!)

For Sherlock Holmes fans, a visit to 221b Baker St. definitely goes on the itinerary. The world’s most famous address is home to the Sherlock Holmes Museum, and the Victorian apartment is protected by the government as a site of historical interest.

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The UK Diaries Part 2: Shakespeare

 

Of course, Shakespeare was on the itinerary. We’ve been Shakespeare lovers for most of our lives, way before our milk teeth grew out. Our school had an annual play production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream put on by the sixth graders (I played Snout / The Wall and was Props director when it was our turn, if you must know), and to this day, we can still recite long passages of the play from memory.

We hit two Shakespearean destinations for this trip: Shakespeare’s Globe on the South Bank in London, and Shakespeare’s Birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire.

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The UK Diaries Part 1: MinaLima + Cursed Child

It was one year in the making.

Remember how we were holed up at the Writer’s Bar at Raffles last year, reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child over copious cups of tea?

Well, a few days after that, a new batch of theatre tickets to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child went on sale, and much as we bellyached over the content of the screenplay, we decided to join the online queue for a shot at the much-coveted tickets… and before I knew it I was on a trip that snowballed into me fangirling all over the UK.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I got back, and I’ve been tackling the pileup in  my workload (and my hallway library is in disarray), but I have so many stories and photos to share from this trip, so let me start with this one.

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