When I first arrived in Paris, I thought my dream was to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre Museum. And it was definitely a dream come true and such a memorable experience that I hope to remember for the rest of my life. But I do have to say that yesterday's excursion to see the Harry Potter Studio Tour topped the Mona Lisa (sorry da Vinci). So Sunday night my friends and I decided to see how to get to the studio for our tour. We found out that where we were ending class that day and where the Studio Tour was taking place were on two opposite sides outside of London. So I began a slight panic. We gave ourselves 2 hours to get to the studio...so we thought we would have plenty of time! Then we started to look into exactly how to get there, and soon realized that 2 hours was not going to be enough time! So Monday morning bright and early I called the Harry Potter tours to move our tour time to the last possible time of 4pm. Which ended up not being a problem, but would cost us 10 pounds. So 3 hours should be enough time...right? We sure hoped so. So then we ran into the problem of not having power or internet at our hotel...our teachers were not happy about this. And I had no way of printing out our email confirmation in order to pick up the tickets at the studio...which caused a lot more stress on me. After a bit of looking up stuff and calling people we found out it wasn't a problem that we didn't have the email print out...whew! So class began at 10 am leaving from the hotel. We seemed to be wandering aimlessly throughout London with our tour guide...when our teachers had had enough of this un-planned tour so we split from the tour guides (who set up our entire stay in London) and ended up being let out early to go to the Harry Potter tour. I was finally starting to feel excited about the tour and not nervous about getting there! Although our class was going out to 'see' the Olympic Village after we left, we weren't too sad about missing it considering our plans had changed and we weren't able to go inside the buildings. We later also found out they couldn't even get close to the Olympic Park and they had to view it from a viewing platform inside of some casino...? Poor planning on somebody's part there as well. The Olympic Park is supposed to be open to the public as a series of community centers, but apparently there is construction an we can't view the buildings or grounds yet :'( Anyways, back to Harry Potter. We took a series of trains and an awesome looking double-decker bus...and we were finally at Harry Potter world! I thought I was going to faint/cry/pee my pants from excitement!! After much freaking out (and not all of it was from me!) we went inside to get ready for the tour. We were about an hour early, but we were excited to wander around the amazing gift shop when we heard an announcement that they were letting people in early! Jackpot! And we go in line to find out our tour group is tiny! Double jackpot! So worth going through all the trouble to finally be at the tour! I can't go into too much detail about the tour itself considering I could write a novel about all the things I have seen! The highlights were seeing the Gryffindor common room, drinking butterbeer (amazingly delicious!), and seeing the many different miniature (and also really big) models of all the buildings at Hogwarts and the wizarding world. Such a great day afterall! Today was our first real day of class with our teacher in London. Today we started off walking across Tower Bridge and learning about the London City Hall designed by Norman Foster. We then continued our walk toward the Millenium Bridge and saw a great view of the Globe Theatre as well. We also stumbled upon a random street food market and I tried Falafel for the first time! It was actually really good and I really enjoyed all the food and the atmosphere at this outdoor market. We then continued our journey to the Tate Modern Art Museum. The building itself was interesting inside as it used to be a power plant of sorts, but the art, especially the human performance art, was really...interesting. Definitely not my taste. We then walked across Millenium Bridge (as seen in the 6th Harry Potter film being broken by the death eaters in the beginning of the movie). We then went to John Soane's museum, but pictures were not allowed inside. All I can describe it as an architectural artifact hoarder's dream. But the museum itself was actually incredible as well as the work Soane did to the interiors. To top the day off we did a quick walking tour of the Financial District and saw the Lloyd's of London building and the Swiss Re 'Gherkin' building. Very cool indeed. I have no idea what is in store for tomorrow as I am completely exhausted from the past two days. It's almost 9:30 pm here...and I am about ready for bed! Dublin on Thursday. Cheerio!
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