From a dead sleep, I shot awake at about three in the morning, my throat full of vomit. I sat rigidly on the edge of the bed and instantly choked it down. I wasn’t nauseous. It just happened. Perhaps it was that I ate dinner so close to going to bed — I’ve heard that can happen. Perhaps the soft Airbnb bed sort of had me a bit more inverted than I usually sleep — probably both. But then I simply couldn’t get back to sleep. I tossed and turned, got up, walked around, made some tea, came back to bed, and stared out the window as a light London A.M. rain came down on the Kensington street below. Something was buzzing around in my head, as if the energy of the city had seeped in and wouldn’t allow my mind to quiet. Point is, I lost a lot of sleep that night. Which was unfortunate, because the next day would involve major walking, for it was
HARRY POTTER DAY!
Tiffany, Charlie, Chase and I Ubered our way across London to some tour company office, where we convened with a large group of other assholes we didn’t know to get on a bus which then transported us to WARNER BROS. LONDON!! Raw and exhausted, I tried to sleep on the 90-minute bus ride to Warner Bros. London. But that was of little use, as a great majority of the trip was the bus jerking and weaving in and around London traffic.
What is Warner Bros. London you may ask? It’s essentially a collection of sound stages where productions still take place — One of those productions was the Harry Potter franchise. And Warner Bros London, in their sage thinking, have created this fantastic sound stage tour of the multitudes of Harry Potter sets and props and special effect techniques…from ALL the movies. There is nothing like it here in the States. Of all the things scheduled on our trip, I was most skeptical about whether this would be a valuable use of our time — but it was marvelous and definitely worth it.
We spent the bulk of the day there with the tour being divided into two parts. Halfway through we had lunch with exclusive Butter Beer soft serve ice cream and ate outside in the courtyard next to the Hogwart’s bridge as a light drizzle sprinkled down on us…along with the fake snow from the attraction! But it was also fantastic to people watch. Apparently, when kids in Britain go on field trips they all have to wear dayglo green reflector vests. BRILLIANT! At the end of the tour, we wandered into what must singlehandedly be the largest Harry Potter gift shop in all of Europe…where we dropped significant goblin gold for two absolutely lovely Quiddich sweaters for Charlie and Chase.
Once we returned in the afternoon, Daddy took a quick nappy-pooh, and then we tackled part two of our Harry Potter Day as we went on a nighttime London by Foot Harry Potter Tour. What a fantastic tour! Given under the guise of showing various locations of where the Harry Potter movies filmed, our awesome tour guide subversively snuck in just as much, if not more, London history and factoids than Harry Potter tidbits.
The one thing that really started to sink in for me was the indelible impact that Harry Potter author JK Rowling has had on the U.K. There is, obviously, the cultural phenomenon of her novels. But more than that, her ideas have created thousands upon thousands of jobs that no author even thinks about when they sit down to create. Her novels have built an entire tourism industry that has been an absolute boon to the U.K. And it really goes even deeper than that but I don’t want to turn this into a book report. I’ll never forget walking along the damp nighttime London streets in awe of the true impact this modern woman has had on an entire country…and it all started with a pencil and paper.
Over the span of about three hours we hoofed it from Parliament Square to 10 Downing Street to Old Scotland Yard to Trafalgar Square to St. Paul’s Cathedral to the Millennium Bridge to the Globe Theatre to the Borough Market. It was one hell of a trek — the tour even took us on the tube. It was the perfect way to take in the city. But by the end I was so tired I could barely put one foot in front of the other. I did more walking on this day than I ever have in my entire life combined. Over 17 thousand steps, our smartphones told us. All sorts of hurt was washing over me as we made our way back to our Airbnb to repair for the night…for the next day, we WALK MORE!!!