My visit to Hogwarts!

Well, kind of.

My friends Laura, Jess and I decided to take a trip to the Harry Potter Studio Tour in London. We booked an evening slot (5:00 pm) to explore the studio at our own pace. It worked out to be perfect timing; as the night drew near, the whole place thinned out and we were able to enjoy everything properly. And wow, it was awesome!

I actually have a slightly checkered past with Harry Potter, as I refused to read the books or care much for the franchise for the longest time. I had this silly stubborn idea that I wasn't going to be drawn into the fad, and my halfhearted attempt to read the first book only solidified my dumb opinion when I put it down and scoffed that it was childish and simple.

As the years went on and Deathly Hallows had a release date, I couldn't avoid the craze. Everyone was nuts about Harry Potter and, struck with the knowledge that this was the last ever book, and that if I wanted to give it all another go, now was the last big shot I'd have at it, I threw myself into the first book again. This time, I'm happy to say, I loved it. I devoured the whole series in a matter of weeks, just in time to attend the midnight release of Deathly Hallows at Waterstones in Bath. Dressed in my finest robe and Gryffindor tie, I even won two cinema tickets in their fancy dress competition (take that, Actual Children). Safe to say, I was hooked.

The Studio Tour was absolutely amazing. I'm a fan of the movies as well as the books - reading them sort of alongside each other, I had the movie images in my head but allowed the books to fill in the (huge) gaps the films had left out. As a result of reading the books along with the movies, they formed my hippogvision of the characters and scenarios, so it was wonderful seeing all the props and sets in real life, right in front of me. Sometimes, it was pretty hard to actually get my head around the fact that these were the actual props, that the actors held and used, and when we got to the creature shop, I was absolutely blown away with how lifelike the animatronic creations really were. We stood near Buckbeak and he started to move, and in that moment I couldn't see anything but a living, breathing hippogryph in front of me. It wasn't like the stunted movement of a puppet on a Disney ride. It was a real creature. It was all absolutely breathtaking.

Oh, and I finally got to try some Butterbeer! There are only two places in the world licensed to sell Butterbeer (the other one being at the Florida themepark) so this was a big highlight for me! It tasted like liquid caramel ice cream. Om nom.