Quick update - wix has not allowed me to upload more photos/videos without paying :( This means that I only will have 4 more posts (Istanbul, Portugal, Barcelona, and London) on this blog. This does coincide with the end of Sajal's and my worldwide trip so it's coming along with a natural end anyways. These 4 blogs will also have no pictures, but they will all be up on Facebook and Instagram! So please check there.
Sajal and I spent about a week in London and we had so much fun. Being in London felt definitely closer to being in America. Since October, we haven't seen anything unlimited or bottomless, but the first restaurant in London we went to was offering "bottomless coke". Mainland Europe is so different than America in so many ways, but you can clearly see that so much of American culture and habits come straight from England. I also realized how similar London is to the Harry Potter movies! I felt like more than half the things I knew about London came from Harry Potter, and yes I'm a huge fan but this was funny.
Being a huge Harry Potter fan, the first thing we did was take a Harry Potter Walking tour. We saw Leadenhall market which is where JK Rolling inspired Diagon Alley from. It's so old timey and cute I would go even if you're not a fan. The Leadenhall market was also used as a filming location for the outside of Diagon Alley in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. We saw some really old alleyways that inspired Knockturn Alley, which were a little creepy and dark. That's also where we learned where the name "Order of Phoenix" came from. We then saw the financial district that inspired Gingrots Bank. We saw Millennium Bridge, which was the bridge that fell apart in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. We also saw the filming location outside the leaky cauldron in Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban. Overall the tour was super fun! We saw a lot of London and learned things about London not just related to Harry Potter as well.
Not on the Harry Potter tour, but something we had to do was go to Kings Cross Station and see the actual platform 9 & 3/4. Of course, such a platform doesn't exist, but Kings Cross put up a sign for fans to see when they visit. I thought this was going to be a super cool thing with a sign just like movies. Unfortunately, it was just a sign on a wall near platforms 9 and 10. There also was an hour wait for people to take a picture in front of it. I've taken tons of pictures like that at Universal Studios and Harry Potter Events, so honestly it was a letdown.
After that tour, we got some High Tea. If you don't know, high tea is essentially having tea, scones, mini sandwiches, and tea from 1-4 pm ish. High tea came from London so we had to try it out here. We've had high tea at a couple of places but I highly recommend the Tea House Theater in Vauxhall. It was a really cute spot and the food was really good. But you can find high tea all over the city. Some places can be pretty expensive ($100 a person) but you can also find some inexpensive options ($25-$35 a person).
After high tea, we walked to Buckingham Palace. I am a huge fan of the Crown and love keeping up with Royals so I was really excited to look at the main Palace of the British Crown. We didn't have tickets to go inside as it was all sold out and only available on some days. The palace looked nice from the outside but was somehow smaller than I imagined.
From there we walked to Big Ben. We had already seen the Thames River a couple of times when we crossed it with the Millenium Bridge but seeing the Thames River at night was really pretty. We got a beautiful view of the London Eye, the Thames River, and Big Ben.
We went to the Harry Potter Studio Tour too. We went to the Warner Brother's Studio Tour in L.A., and I loved it. They told us that all of the Harry Potter stuff was in the London studio tour though and to visit there. The studio tour was filled with everything Harry Potter. They had the set of the great hall, the Gryffindor house room, a huge model of the entire Hogwarts castle, costumes, goblin masks, and so much more. While we enjoyed walking around and seeing everything, I felt that it was a bit underwhelming. I think it's way more fun to go to Universal and actually pretend you're a wizard. This experience more of explained everything about the movies and how they did everything, which took the magic away a little bit.
Something we did not know is how big London is. We stayed at my uncle's house, and though it was in London zoning, it was a 30-45 minute train to downtown London. Oxford is more than an hour away! We ended up getting a car halfway through the week so that we could wander around more easily. Though driving on the wrong - I mean left - side of the road was tricky at first, Sajal was able to get it down easily enough. That being said, we drove to Stonehenge! Stonehenge was super cool, it was cool to see something that was built 5,000 years ago. Going to Stonehenge really made me want to visit Egypt, because the pyramids were built at the same time as Stonehenge which is insane. They also had huts there that showed how the people lived back then.
And that was our trip to London!
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