London Day 4: The one where we all became wizards

Today was our last full day in Europe; it was bittersweet, but couldn't have ended on a higher note.

In the afternoon, Haley, Kellie, and I visited Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace.   It was nice to walk around a different part of London and see the touristy sights.  We couldn't see the inside of Westminster Abbey because we would've had to pay but it was still a beautiful church.  Buckingham palace was not what I expected, but the gates were really pretty with ornate lions, crowns, and cold everywhere.  However the best part was probably the park we walked into afterward because we finally got to see horses after searching for days, and the police officer even let us pet her horse.

We were then off to the Harry Potter studio for a tour of the movie set.  I was so excited for this tour because I have seen all the Harry Potter movies and I have never been on a movie set before.  It was better than I even imagined, but also very different.  I was expecting everything to be much bigger; I didn't know that all the rooms were actually really close to each other and that they only needed a small area to film a scene.  Also, seeing the movie is one thing, but seeing everything in person is on a whole other level because I saw just how much detail went into everything.  All the props, sets, creatures, and costumes had to be hand made and placed in a certain way  from the typography on each newspaper, the thousands of wand boxes, the animatronics, to every cup or decor item in the houses.  It was also really interesting to see how each building or prop was designed.  Everything started as a concept painting, turned into a drawing/sketch, and then a cardboard model where they could test out filming.  What blew me away though was that a crew built Hogwarts in only 40 days yet it is so details and perfected.  It was also really fun to just go through and say this prop or consume is from this movie or that movie.  I liked that we could interact with some of the props/sets too like the train and brooms.  Now I want to go onto other movie or TV sets and see how similar or different they are.  I can definitely see though how working on this movie would be a graphic and costume designer's, artist's, or  engineer's dream job since without their work they wouldn't really be a movie.

I am going to miss Europe and all of the amazing girls on this trip like crazy, but today was such a great way to end the trip and I couldn't be happier!








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