Day 18 London

Can't believe the luck we have had with weather on this holiday- hope I'm not tempting fate by saying so. Sharon said it had been miserable the week before we arrived in London, but we have had sunshine, no rain & no wind & people have been commenting how nice it is. Just checked the Berlin forecast and it's been foggy the last few days but forecast sunshine for the 4 days after we get there. 

For today we had booked to go to Warner Bros Studios for the Harry Potter tour. Our time slot was 12 noon and we thought it could take us a while to get there as have to catch an overground train to Watford Junction. We caught the tube to Euston and had breakfast at a Cafe Nero and then got on the  express train to Watford Junction.  

It was a pretty fast train so only took 20 minutes. We then transferred to a very unsubtle Harry Potter double decker bus that took us the 10 minute drive to the studio.

We were a but early but the queues were massive, so it was good to be early. We had a look around the enormous gift shop first. In was unbelievable how much merchandise was on sale...all good quality but pretty expensive. You could by an adult sized cape for any of the school houses...Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw or Slytherin for just £80.

 There were also school ties, jerseys, scarves...etc etc...Just like in the movies you could choose from a selection of wands, all in boxes piled to the ceiling.

There were soft toys galore, badges, key rings, candy related to the movies....and so much more.

After much persuasion I managed to get Cam to try on a cape so I could take a photo....under orders that it must not appear on Facebook!

We then joined the queue to enter... Next to the cupboard under the stairs

Then a short film clip and then the giant doors

were opened and we were in the Great Hall....where food and gatherings were in the films. It was instantly recognisable to us and pretty impressive.

From here you could walk through the studio at your own pace. We saw Dumbledores office

 potions classroom

Gryffindor common room

Hagrids hut

....and much more.

The areas we could walk through were massive, but there really wasn't much to do except take photos.

There was an area you could ride a mechanical broom in front of a green screen and they videoed it for you to buy video or photo of. Pretty big queues for that and as you can imagine there was no persuading Cam to give it a go.  We kept walking and around the halway point was a cafe selling awful food & you could buy a butterbeer (a non-alcoholic drink from one of the films).

We bought one to share & it actually wasn't too bad. A bit like creaming soda with a caramel type froth on top....quite sweet!

There was then an outside area with the night-bus,

Privet Drive

the Anglia car & Hogwarts bridge.

 Then back into another studio area which began with Diagon Alley....which was very cool.

This included the wand shop, pet store with owls in cages outside

candy store, quidditch broom shop, etc...

 From here there were just a few more displays and then the model of Hogwarts Castle

.....and back to the gift shop.  Cam wanted to buy something but struggled to decide what. He was tempted by the wands but it would just sit in drawer, so eventually settled on a large (magical) chocolate frog (boxed as in the movie)

& a packet of every-flavour jelly beans (also as in one of the films). They were overpriced, but he has hardly bought a thing this holiday.  We did the whole tour in just over 2 hours and although it was enjoyable, we wouldn't rate it as a must see unless a real fan of Harry Potter. It wasn't as good value as other places we have been.

We then did the reverse trip back to London.....and headed to the V & A museum in South Kensington.

 This is a well rated museum and although we had to do a fast pace around it (it was getting late), we did enjoy it.  There were some impressive statues

artworks

and I liked the glass section as it was different from anything seen elsewhere.

There is also an incredible blown glass chandelier in the main entrance area....looked fabulous from every angle.

 The cafes in the gallery were also like a work of art...we could so imagine nana sitting there with her lady friends...with all the gorgeous art & decorations surrounding them.  If we had been hungry we would have sat there ourselves.

When we left there I noticed a sign to Harrods and googled it to find it was only 10 minutes walk away. I wanted Cam to see it so he was persuaded we should go for a quick look.  

It was a pretty quick visit but we saw the very impressive food halls

, a quick trip through high end jewellery that made us uncomfortable, ridiculously expensive clothing,

swimsuits displayed on weird hangers, and then paused a bit in the gift area so I could get a souvenir.  There was some furniture I would like to bring home.

 It was good to tick that off our list without wasting much time.

We then went back to our hotel and for an average dinner nearby (probably our worst so far).

Our good fortune seems to have taken a break today as I received an email from Germanwings this afternoon advising that our flight to Berlin tomorrow is cancelled due to staff striking. This caused a bit of a panic. The email didn't rebook us, just said we can rebook or get a refund. Really crap service just like my Auckland Jetstar experience!  We looked at booking with another airline but they were all super early in the morning and much more expensive. I then tried their website to rebook and managed to get a flight to Berlin via Stuttgart. This means we leave slightly earlier, have 2 flights instead of one direct, and after 4 hours in Stuttgart arrive late at night in Berlin....we also don't get seats next to each other...stink!  Hope they don't cancel these flights.  Seems a bit strange to say staff are striking when we could book these flights. Keep your fingers crossed for us tomorrow!