Gruenhundstrasse

Raise your hand if you know what this famous landmark is!

Well, if you said "Big Ben" you are....

WRONG!!!

What you think is Big Ben is actually called the Tower of Westminster. It is a tower on the Parliament building, kind of like the Capitol Building in the United States. It is where the British Parliament meets - kind of like our Congress.

Big Ben is the name of the large bell inside the tower that strikes on the hour. Of course Kieran had to jump in front of the Tower of Westminster.

We came back at night to see it all lit up. We waited to see Tinkerbell and Peter Pan fly past, but they never came.

Who knows what this famous landmark is? Yep, it's the London Eye. It's basically just a giant ferris wheel where each car holds like 30 people and it moves so slowly you can't even tell it's moving.

Not Big Ben at night...

Not Big Ben at night with a double decker bus...

This is exciting! Not Big Ben from the OTHER side!

That's the River Thames in the front of the shot.

Some weird people kissing in front of Not Big Ben...

Right across the street from Parliament (Not Big Ben) you will find this famous landmark....Anyone know it??

If you said Westminster Abbey.....you are....

CORRECT!

We went there on a Sunday to the Evensong service. We got to sit in the choir loft to hear the service. The organ and the choir sounded amazing!

Who knows what this famous landmark is?

If you said the Tower of London....you are.....

CORRECT!

They had a palace guard out in front guarding the crown jewels.

Owee-oh....Yoooooh....Ho....

Not only were the crown jewels there, but also some sort of armory.

It kind of looks like this horse got a fancy cup stuck on his face.

Apparently the Japanese Premiere sent the Queen a Samurai suit.

And here is a giant dragon made completely out of weapons.

Some sort of Mortar....Kieran liked the armory.

Here is a royal cypher that is on the gates of the Tower of London. It stands for King George VI.

Now....who knows this famous landmark?

If you said the London Bridge......you are.....

WRONG!!!!!!

This bridge is called the Tower Bridge. The London Bridge is the next bridge over, and it's kind of ordinary looking...

London Bridge

Not London Bridge (Tower Bridge)

The Not London Bridge has a drawbridge that can open up for larger vessels to come down the river.

You can walk across the Tower Bridge.

There is a museum inside the towers, and you can see how the drawbridge works.

Well, I hope you learned something you didn't know about London!

Next time I will give you the tours of the Queen's residences...Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. See you then!

"Mobiliarbus!" is a spell which is used to move a tree from one location to another. Thank you, Grandpa and Madelyn, for transporting shrubberies from your computer to mine. I said anyone who sent me a picture of a shrubbery would get a....something. How about a tour of Hogwarts?

On that note,

Welcome to Hogwarts!

While on our trip to London we had to stop by Harry Potter Land (Warner Brothers Studios) to tour the movie sets used in the filming of all the Harry Potter movies.

The first stop on our tour is the Great Hall!

Where, yes, Pixie Puffs are part of a complete breakfast!

Yay! Plates!

It was fun to see Harry's "under-the-stairs" room in actual size because it was really, really tiny! It's a good thing he didn't live here after he came back in the second movie, because he would not have fit!

Here's Harry's new room at Hogwarts. If you look closely, you can see Ron's trunk (with R.W. on it) under the bed on the right.

A crazy hallway from one of the movies was actually an optical illusion. It looks like a really long hallway, but it was actually really short with a tiny chair in it.

Clock.

I didn't see Harry's parents in the Mirror of Erised. But I did see mine.

Dumbledore's office...

the Potion's Room...

This is the crazy vault lock. It's so awesome!

This is the huge statue for the Ministry of Magic.

I love this room! It's the pink plush room with a bunch of cat plates on the wall belonging to Dolores Umbridge, the weird pink teacher.

And here is the promised triple-decker bus!

It goes to all destinations (but nothing underwater, of course.)

And, of course, we had to try the Butterbeer.

It tastes like cream soda with some sort of butterscotch foam on top. Mmmm!

When you exited the tour, they had a ton of wand boxes with all the names of every person who worked on any of the movies. It was amazing to see how many people were involved in the making of these films!

There are Harry Potter related things all over England if you know where to look for them. Apparently, the City of London School is where Daniel Radcliff when to High School.

We took a day trip to Oxford. A lot of the colleges here were the basic inspiration for Hogwarts. This is the most famous of the colleges in Oxford, Christ's Church College.

The students who go here live here, go to school here, eat here, etc., just like Hogwarts.

Random circle of flowers...

Cool windows.

There was ivy growing down the whole side of the building.

This inner courtyard at Christ's Church College was actually used to film many scenes and is supposed to be a courtyard in Hogwarts.

Does it look familiar?

What about this? Hmmm....a Dining Hall...this is what was inspiration for the Great Hall in Harry Potter.

Yay. Plates.

This is the stairway that leads to the Dining Hall at Oxford, but they also used it to film the stairway leading up to the Great Hall in Hogwarts.

This is the church in Christ's Church College.

The students would go to church here, too.

This is the central quad of Christ's Church. If it looks familiar, I don't think it's in Harry Potter, but it was used in filming the old movie "Chariots of Fire."