Wizards, Time Lords, and Leprechauns

This last weekend Kasha and I took a trip to the UK. We spent 3 days in London and 2 in Dublin. London was amazing for many reasons, the food was almost American (minus calling fries chips), they had Starbucks literally everywhere (we have none in Italy and to me there is literally nothing more beautiful in this world than a to-go cup), and the best part everyone speaks English! There was a downside however, the conversion rate from dollars to pounds is brutal. Its almost $2 to 1 pound. I have never wanted to cry more while standing in front of an ATM. On top of a ridiculous conversion rate, everything was very expensive.

Our first morning in London we hopped on a hour long train ride and went to Warner Brothers Leavesden Studios for The Making of Harry Potter tour. For any obsessive Harry Potter fan like me, this place is mecca. They have all the original props, sets, and costumes from the films.

Not only did we get to see props we also got to see behind the scenes and learn how some of the magic happened, like how they made Hagrid look so large.

To make Hagrid look so big the actor had a size double who wore padded clothing and an animatronic head.

They really spared no expense making visitors feel like they were part of the Harry Potter Magic. They had all the small props you would expect to see but they also had vehicles, full scale rooms, and even entire buildings.

After going through the animatronic shop we entered Diagon Alley. I almost cried walking into the one place I’ve been dreaming of since childhood. To be honest a tear might have welled up. Now I’ve been to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando but there they have a weird half Hogsmeade half Diagon Alley set up complete with snow capped roofs in Florida heat. While that experience was amazing and magical it pales in comparison to walking down actual Diagon Alley in all its low lit glory.

After Harry Potter we spent the rest of the day and the next morning checking out all the London sights.

Since when do the guards at Buckingham Palace wear blue? Have all of my favorite movies about London been lies?

We saw so many more things than this but if I posted a photo for each one we would be here all day. Our second afternoon we took a tour to Stonehenge after learning it is much more beneficial to take a tour than try to go by ourselves.

The next morning not so bright and way too early we flew out to Dublin. One of my sorority sisters Samy is studying there and she took us around, showed us the sights, and even got us a place to stay. We went to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade which is like a US parade on crack. Most of the bands in the parade were from US schools though. We spent the rest of St. Paddy’s roaming around Dublin taking in the “atmosphere” (which include hearing cops telling people to chug beers).

We met some Americans on the tube in London who told us that they heard that St. Paddy’s in Dublin wasn’t as good as Boston because “On St. Patrick’s Day not even the Irish are as Irish as Bostoners.” While I can’t speak for Boston I saw a great amount of national pride walking around Dublin. There was no building without a flag or green, white, and orange.

I had an amazing nerd filled “weekend” (can I call 5 days a weekend?) in the UK but being somewhere so close but yet so different to American culture made me a bit homesick. It was a magical land of Mexican food, barbeque sauce, knock off Mountain Dew, and Starbucks.

After finding out that my spring break trip got cancelled and having to frantically rebook everything I can now proudly say that I will spend the next week in Prague, Berlin, and Paris. Talk to you in 10 days!

Ciao for now, Amanda