London Day Two: Harry Potter Tour--Lacock Pt. 2

We made our way to Lacock Abbey, founded in the early 13th century by Ela, Countess of Salisbury, as a nunnery of the Augustinian order. In the mid-16th century, Henry VIII dissolved monasteries, nunneries and friaries all over England, Wales and Ireland as part of his new Church's separation from Rome. His purse was suddenly much fuller. Our guide Gordon said that Lacock was the last abbey to be dissolved. Henry sold it to a Sir William Sharrington who demolished the abbey church in order to build a comfortable house, but left most of the rest of the abbey untouched. Those original sections make the abbey a perfect film location for such movies as the Harry Potter series, The Other Boleyn Girl and the aforementioned masterpiece Pride and Prejudice.

The first room we visited was the former Sacristy, which served as...

...Professor Snape's Potions classroom in Sorcerer's Stone.

That's the doorway Snape first storms through, robes billowing all sexy-like behind him.

Gordon had us pose in the corner where...

...Snape delivers his potions speech, all sexy-like. "I can teach you how to bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses..." How can you resist Rickman's Snape? (Especially after you've seen Rickman in Sense and Sensibility. Snape will never be a greasy git in my eyes.)

The Chapter Room was used in the first two films; in Sorcerer's Stone as the room where...

....Harry first finds the Mirror of Erised.

In Chamber of Secrets after Harry's gift of Parseltongue has been revealed, suspicious looks thrown Harry's way during study time make Harry slam his book shut and leave the room, walking by this window.

And there he goes, poor boy.

After Harry serves detention with Gilderoy Lockhart (helping to answer Lockhart's fanmail) in Chamber of Secrets, he leaves the classroom via this door.

Do you remember what happens at that point?

He hears a voice that seems to be coming from inside the wall saying, "Blood....I smell blood..."

And the voice continues with "Let me rip you...let me kill you..."

At this corner, Harry tells Hermione and Ron about the strange voice.

This same set of hallways along the abbey's cloister serves as Cambridge in Pride and Prejudice. University student Fitzwilliam Darcy walks purposefully along these hallways until he arrives at a door, behind which he finds naughty Mr. Wickham in an embrace with a scantily clad young lady. Other parts of the abbey we didn't visit were used for interior shots of Pemberley, Mr. Darcy's estate.

The Warming Room served as the classroom of....

....Quirrell, the stuttering professor with the malodorous turban. You can just make out the large cauldron next to him.

This was the only room where the nuns had a fire. This cauldron is over 500 years old. A platform was built around it for Quirrell to stand on.

Lacock Abbey acknowledges is connection with the first two Harry Potter films by displaying this poster. The only problem is, none of those scenes featured on the poster were filmed at the Abbey. Our guide was quite proud to point this out, and doing so served to deepen our appreciation of his Harry Potter expertise.

Harry, Ron and Hermione ran down this corridor to escape Mrs. Norris in one or possibly both of the first two movies.

Back outside trying to figure out how a sundial works

Leaving the abbey

One last photo at the abbey. Gordon asked if we recognized this location and said that taking a photo here was a must for diehard Potter fans. We were ashamed to admit that we couldn't identify it. Can you?

This is the place baby Harry and his parents posed for that photo that Hagrid places in a scrapbook for Harry. You see the scrapbook at the end of Sorcerer's Stone and at the beginning of Chamber of Secrets.

It was time for lunch!

London Day Two: Harry Potter Tour -- Lacock Pt. 1

We're all big fans of both the Harry Potter books and films, so it was natural we would want to take a Harry Potter tour while in London. There are many different tours and I narrowed it down to a 10-hour London Taxi Tour.

These tours are not cheap and I had originally thought I could plan out a tour on my own for both London and Oxford, but just needing to get to different locations could make this difficult and I could see the kids protesting that they were tired of walking and getting lost. Taking a guided tour would eliminate any guesswork. Grandma and Grandpa would spend their day touring London.

I had heard from my friend Rhonda that you could find that southern delight, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, in London and there just so happened to be a stand at the railway station we would arrive at and leave from London everyday to get back to Mottingham. We had promised the kids back in Germany we would have Krispy Kremes and the $2.50 per piece pricetag did not deter us. Those doughnuts were worth every cent.

Gordon, our tour guide, found us right outside the train station and loaded us into his van.


View Harry Potter Tour in a larger map
The first part of our tour would be leaving London and heading out to the most distant location, Lacock in Wiltshire, almost to the other side of England. But first we needed to get out of London.

We drove over Lambeth Bridge, the place the Knight Bus squeezes in between two other buses. Traffic slowed us down and we didn't see another Harry Potter location for 2½ hours.

We had a tough time getting through London and then we crossed England and arrived at Lacock, a charming rural village untouched by modern development.

The wall behind us is to where Harry and Dumbledore first apparate at the beginning of The Half-Blood Prince.

Harry and Dumbledore walk by this door on their way to their mysterious destination. It became obvious very early on that our guide knew his stuff. He posed us in the exact angles we would see in the films and snapped several pictures of each shot.

Strolling down a street, we passed King John's Hunting Lodge, the oldest house in this medieval village. The main part of the lodge, dating back to the 13th century, still has much of the original cruck beam structure. King John (1167 - 1216), "Bad King John" of Robin Hood fame, frequently indulged his passion for hunting in the surrounding forest, and it is likely that he made regular visits to his Hunting Lodge.

The Potter house from Sorcerer's Stone.

The village is owned almost in its entirety by the National Trust, and attracts many visitors by virtue of its unspoiled appearance. It also attracts many film crews. Do you recognize this street? It was used as downtown Meryton in the 1995 BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice, the best adaptation of Jane Austen's novel. Other TV programs and movies filmed here include another Austen adaptation, Emma with Kate Beckinsale, several different Robin Hood films, Cranford and The Other Boleyn Girl.

Can you believe it? What a way to break the heart of a Pride and Prejudice fan! The Red Lion Pub is where Mr. Darcy first sees Elizabeth Bennet and declares her "tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me." That blue contraption vexed me greatly!

Here is the delectable Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. You can see the Red Lion over his shoulder. This miniseries was a cultural phenomenon in Britain, due in great part to Firth's portrayal of the proud Mr. Darcy. I remember watching it when it was first broadcast in the U.S. on A&E, over a period of three days. It killed me to have to wait an entire 22 hours to see the next part.

And then there was this scene. Mr. Darcy takes a dip in his lake after traveling home on horseback from London. Making his way to his house, in his wet undershirt and lost in thought, who should he run into but the woman who has been occupying those thoughts, Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Even though I had already read the book and knew what would happen, I do believe I let out a gasp, then a whoop and finally a shriek when the two laid eyes on each other. Here, velvet-eyed Mr. Darcy has lost his composure in the presence of the now much-more-than-tolerable Miss Bennet and is asking, "And your parents are in good health?" for the second in just a few minutes.  I love Harry Potter films, but I have to admit there is no better way to spend six hours than to watch this miniseries. Sigh.

London Day One: Flying standby

It's fall break and time to take a trip. We chose London and persuaded Grandma and Grandpa Nylund to join us. The first step would be getting there with a standby plane ticket.

One part of this process that has always irked me is how you are not allowed to sit at your flight's gate at the Frankfurt Airport unless you have an assigned seat. And it has seemingly never occurred to anyone to put more than just one or two seats outside the gates. So, we always end up standing for an hour. Standing. Standing with four kids. Do you know how slowly an hour creeps by when you are just standing there? At least we brought our stroller so Becca, who would have wanted to be held the whole time, could get off her feet.

At such moments, I remind myself that if David were working with any other company here in Germany, we would not be taking such trips. I shouldn't complain about having to stand for an hour every once in a while.

We did not get on the first flight, so we needed to crisscross the airport, get to the next gate and then...stand some more. We did get on the second flight. Hooray! Standby is stressful and we always do a big sigh of relief and an internal happy dance when the ticket agents call our name.


In one hour, we were landing in Heathrow. In one hour via the Tube we were in the center of London and then one hour later, we were arriving in the town where we had rented an apartment, Mottingham.


We found a nice little apartment a 17-minute train ride from London with 2 bathrooms, plenty of beds and most importantly, a kitchen. Just eliminating the hunt for breakfast every morning will make things easier.

For dinner, we had hamburgers for dinner with Kraft Original Macaroni and Cheese brought over from the U.S. by Grandma and Grandpa. Mac and cheese is always a welcome treat. And then it was early to bed as we have a big day tomorrow. Harry Potter, here we come!

And even more random observations

Emilie got points taken off a test last week because she wrote "The function of the Queen Bee is laying eggs," instead of "The function of the Queen Bee is to lay eggs." She also lost points for writing "Me and Micaela went to the store," (not grammatically correct, I grant you) instead of what the teacher thought was more correct -- "Myself and Micaela went to the store." I've learned from experience that it's not worth complaining about. I tried once when James lost several points for perfectly good English on a composition. The school re-instated those points and then proceeded to go through his composition again with a fine-toothed comb and took off that exact same number of points for silly things they missed the first time around. Not worth it.

One of the kids at Rebecca's preschool rides this bike. The brand name made me chuckle and feel slightly sick to my stomach.

The wonderful grandmotherly director of our preschool wore a nice blouse last week. As she turned to lead the children to the chapel for religious instruction, across her back, emblazoned in huge letters, was the phrase "Cold Drinks and Hot Girls!"

The electronics store at the mall sells turntables and music on vinyl. And you do see new releases, not just old albums.

It's a German tradition that you provide a treat for your colleagues to enjoy on your birthday. Last February, David stopped by our bakery on the way to work and said he wanted to buy a bunch of rolls and an entire apple cake. The bakery lady sputtered, "But, but, if I sell you the entire cake, I won't have any for my other customers!" She reluctantly boxed up the cake for David and reprimanded him with a "Next time, order it in advance!" David wanted to say, "I thought the whole point of this was for you to sell stuff and for me to purchase it." He has also learned from experience that it wouldn't have been worth it.

There was a man's shirt for sale at our little grocery store that said "I take mine shaked, not stirred."

I let James change the channel of the car radio from a station "for grownups" to a top 40 one. During the 8-minute drive to the mall the other day and the 8-minute drive back, I listened to four songs, three of which incorporated the f-word. One was the Pink song Funhouse, the second was the Lily Allen song F**ck You (very much) during which she says the f-word about 25 times (I tried counting, but it's a catchy tune and hard not to sing along to), and the third song included not only the f-word, but also the sublime lyrics "Shush, girl, shut your lips, do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips." For the record, Helen Keller did learn to speak vocally.

The children's show "Make Way for Noddy," a program about a bobble-head doll, is shown here in Germany and we also caught it on TV one day in France. Micaela reminded me recently of the title character's name in French: Oui-Oui. My kids thought that was hilarious. Bathroom humor is big in our house.

That long thin bundle of meat I saw at the supermarket last week didn't look familiar. I check the label and discovered it was a rabbit.

You often see bikers and scooter riders pulling a trailer behind them loaded with their groceries or crates of mineral water. Many are much smaller than the one pictured here and look homemade.