A few weeks ago my parents were in London visiting me and Ryan. We did a ton of touristy stuff. We went to Borough Market, the British Museum, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. We went out to eat, went to the cinema, and hung out. We also did some things I’d never done before like visit Oxford. My parents had been there before but through Ryan and I would love it. There’s lots of stuff to do there but let me tell you about a few highlights. Spoiler: they are mainly Harry Potter and museum related. 

First, we went to the Great Hall at Christ Church College at Oxford University. Whew, that’s a mouthful and I’m not sure I even have the name correctly.This gorgeous hall was the inspiration for the Great Hall at Hogwarts in Harry Potter. Also, the stairway outside the hall was used in the first Harry Potter movie when the students were received by Professor McGonagall. The space is lovely and I think it is pretty cool that students still use it for meals. The room is dark and wood paneled with high vaulted ceilings and lots of portraits on the wall. The sheer number of portraits on the wall reminded me of the corridors in Harry Potter. My favorite portraits in the hall were of Henry VIII and William Penn.

Outside the hall is a door with the graffiti “no peel” written in nails hammered into the wooden door. This graffiti dates from the 17th century. There are lots of myths about the motives behind the graffiti, but the real reason is that it was done in protest of the Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. Apparently it was because it was about his changing views on religious reformation. Mostly I like that they kept graffiti around for so long. Nowadays that stuff would get cleaned up pretty quickly I bet.

Generally though the buildings and land around Oxford are beautiful and ornate. It’s a nice place, and I’m sure as a student it must feel awesome to be a part of a long and illustrious history. However, I felt like it was sort of quiet insular place and didn’t have the excitement and bustle that I like about college campuses. But still, I think the opportunity to use and live in a space so beautiful and historic would be awesome. So often places that look like Oxford used to be used but are now just for looking at. I think it’s sort of refreshing that here the places are still active and alive.

After the Great Hall we went to the Cathedral. Again there was some beautiful architecture. The ceiling was pretty cool. It looked like a snowflake or an interlocking web of arches and ribs. What I enjoyed best was the stained glass. You can see an image of one large window in the bottom left picture below. You can also see my parents in the foreground looking at a tomb.

In that window above at the very top is a beautiful stained glass ship. I liked that a lot because it’s an unusual thing to see in a church window. In the photo below is another interesting window showing the beheading of Thomas Becket (center of photo). According to another blog about this window, I found out that Becket doesn’t have a face because Henry VIII found it too graphic. Apparently a plain piece of glass was used to censor it a bit.

After visiting these two places in Christ Church we walked around Oxford a bit more and then found our way over to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. I love natural history museums because I think they have such wow factor. It’s so amazing to see things I’m familiar with but never seen up close. I also like getting to see things I’ve never known about before. Also, I love seeing dinosaurs because they are just awesome.

There was a big exhibit on insects which my family loved but which gave me a bit of the heebie-jeebies. I got a little nervous by seeing the big hairy tarantulas. One of the things I loved the most was the scale model of the earth moon and sun. In the photo on the left, below, you can see my parents all the way across the museum waving. My father is the one on the right and you can kind of see a golden ball in front of him. This represents the sun and it was about the size of a basketball. Now, the photo below on the right was all the way across the room from my parents (so where I was standing when taking their picture). And this model shows the size of the Earth and Moon. So they are to scale in both size and distance relative to the sun. I knew the sun was big and far away but holy moly! We are tiny and peanut sized and I loved seeing it.

I also love natural history museums for the animals. We saw a gigantic taxidermied crab. I’m not sure crabs can be taxidermied, but it was a crab formerly alive but now in a case. It was gigantic, and about as big as me! I also love seeing animal skeletons. I liked seeing how they are similar, how they are different, and also how bodies can be unexpected. For example they had an elephant skeleton and it’s so crazy to see an elephant without a trunk.

Also inside the museum is the Pitt Rivers Museum. I love this museum because it is so quirky and full of fascinating objects. Accessed through the Natural History Museum the Pitt Rivers Museum was founded in 1884 by Lieutenant General Augustus Pitt Rivers who donated his collection to Oxford. It’s such a traditional cabinet of curiosity style of exhibit display which is fun any unusual today. Meaning, instead of displaying just a few things in a minimalist and orderly fashioned, a cabinet of curiosities has lots of things packed closely together. I enjoyed that style. I liked walking into the room and seeing it jammed full of objects. It’s like being in a museum while simultaneously being in an antique shop. You just never know what you’ll find.

The objects in the museum are arranged thematically rather than chronologically which I think is delightful and sometimes a bit random. So there are cases about religious objects, about musical instruments, and cases about writing. I saw a totem pole, a shrunken head, and a pipe. As I walked around it was fun, and surprising, to turn around and be face to face with all kinds of objects. I loved the small gorgeously handwritten object labels. And I loved the surprising collection of objects. The photo above in the bottom left is an ivory ball of many layers all carved from one piece of ivory. Amazing right?

Overall, I had a lovely day out with my family in Oxford. There are a number of things to see and it’s a nice place to stroll around and stop at the places that catch your fancy. I loved seeing the history at the University, I was charmed by the Harry Potter connections, and I really had fun at the Natural History Museum. It’s just a quick train ride outside of London so I recommend considering it if you want to get out of the city for the day!

The post Tourist Tuesday: Oxford appeared first on Cooking is Messy.

Before we moved to London I made a list of places I wanted to visit in and around London. The top two things on my list were Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and Harry Potter Studios. I visited the Globe on week 1, but it took me longer to get to see Harry Potter.

It took me awhile first because it’s expensive with an entrance fee of about £30. Second, I didn’t really want to go alone. Ryan is not a Harry Potter fan and said he would go with me if I really wanted him to. So, I knew  if he’d go and that there might be some moaning and my crazy enthusiasm wouldn’t be reciprocated. Then I thought, maybe I’ll just go by myself. I’m not opposed to doing things alone, but this is something where I wanted to go with someone who would get hyped up and nerd out with me. Thankfully, my friend Charlotte from work said she’d go with me. YAY!

We went last week and it was decorated for Christmas and overall really amazing! I love Harry Potter. Some of you might be rolling your eyes at me right now, but hold on a moment and hear me out. I was an English major in college. I love stories. And a good story should make you feel. It should make you feel happy, and angry, and sad, and hopeful, and invested. It should make you feel empathy for the characters. It should make you strategize about what you would do. It should make you disagree and sometimes also nod your head emphatically. It should connect to yourself and think about how you would react. It should transport you to another world and make you want to be a part of it. Harry Potter has done all of that for me. I have cheered for the characters, I’ve been angry at them, I’ve cried, I’ve been surprised.  It’s wonderful. It is a story that I love, and I only hope you have a story that makes you feel the same way.

And so it was wonderful to get to immerse myself in something I’ve spent so much time reading and watching and talking about. Harry Potter is also important to me because it’s such a big part of my relationship with my oldest friends. At the beginning of the tour we watched a short movie and when the opening music came on I had chills. I was transported back to high school and I remembered leaving school as soon as possible, skipping soccer practice, and getting in line at the Senator Theatre in Baltimore with my friends. That music brought me back to the excitement and anticipation we used to feel. Everything used to stop for Harry Potter, and I liked having that feeling again.

Anyway, I’m going to try not to gush too much more so I can let the photos speak for themselves. I saw the cupboard under the stairs which had a tiny pair of Harry’s original glasses. And then the next real set we saw was the great hall. It was amazing. The floor is real stone, the ceilings are high, and the long tables were set with a Christmas feast. What I was astounded by throughout the entire tour was the attention to detail. There are so many things that would have been seen only quickly, but help make the whole story feel real. I loved the giant wreaths, the stone animals on the wall, and the fireplaces.

Also, there were costumes and props throughout the whole place. They were just lovely. It really helped bring everything to life. Like, the Mirror of Erised. That was one of those things that made me go “oh yeah” because it was something I had forgotten. I also loved the wigs. I took way more pictures of the wigs than are shown, but Bellatrix’s was my favorite one.

My favorite set in the whole thing might have been Dumbledore’s office. I just wanted to say “sherbert lemon” or something else to gain entry. What I found so impressive, again, was the detail. There were so many books – which were UK phone books just bound in leather. And there were so many oil paintings (not pictured) and an artist had to paint all of them! I thought the pensieve looked like a baptismal font, but I still took a picture anyway. I think the pensieve would change the world if it was real. I tried to explain the podcast Serial to Charlotte, and I said that if the pensieve existed, it would solve that case. (A quick digression, download Serial, it’s awesome – and then you’ll get the reference and totally agree)

After Dumbledore’s office, I really liked the Gryffindor scenes. Who read the books and didn’t think about being in Gryffindor? I recently joined Pottermore.com, and I was sorted into Hufflepuff. I’m ok with that because I’m not brave like someone from Gryffindor. And Hufflepuffs have Cedric Diggory and are good with food and cooking, so a girl could do worse. But even so, who doesn’t dream of being in Gryffindor? I loved the Christmas jumpers (yeah I’m saying jumper instead of sweater). They sold them in the gift shop. If I had an R or and H name, I would have thought of buying it. The boys dorm was cool, but tiny. Apparently they used the same tiny set the whole series – even when the boys hit puberty and were too tall!

Snape’s office and all the potions were really cool. I would love it if making potions was a real thing. True story, when I was a kid I wanted to make a potion like a witch, so I mixed water and glitter and colored sand together to pretend. I think Snape’s story line is amazing. It’s one of the best twists of any story I’ve ever read. It’s amazing that you can hate a character for so long, them empathize with him, and then love him. One time my mom and I saw Alan Rickman in New York City and she exclaimed “that’s Snape!” Also, while we’re talking celebrities on my 5th day working at the Science Museum I saw Jason Isaacs (and he spoke to me). He played Lucius Malfoy.

While I was there I did try butterbeer. You can see me drinking it on the night bus. I feel mixed about it. It’s sort of like cream soda, but it has actual cream on top. It’s sort of nice, but also weird to have bubbly soda with a head of cream. I was really impressed by all the creatures I saw in the studio. I think it really helps the movies that there was a combination of CGI and real props, puppets, and robots. For me, when things are over CGI’ed then all I can think about is how it looks fake and computery (think Yoda in the new Star Wars). I can’t suspend my disbelief as well. I thought little Voldemort was scary and I also like Dobby’s head in the background. Also, I didn’t post a picture here, but did you know that sometime Hagrid was an animatronic head? In order to make him so tall, sometimes the body double wore an animatronic head that had MOVING EYES!

Have you read that JK Rowling says she thinks maybe Hermoine should have ended up with Harry? I do agree that maybe they would have been more compatible. But I like her with Ron for a number of reasons. First, in so many stories the hero gets everything. I like that sometimes Harry is annoying and feels alone and has a hard time. I think it is good for the story that Harry didn’t get the girl. I also think Ron getting all jealous and being an awkward blustering teenager was amazing and fits with his character. Harry wouldn’t have been jealous in the same way. And finally, Harry didn’t really have a family and was adopted into the Weasley’s. By ending up with Ginny he really gets to be part of their family. The set for their home was cool. Charlotte and I pressed buttons to make the knife chop, iron move, and knitting needles knit. Their family clock is the best though.

I took a lot of pictures of some of the tiny props too. I sort of want Hermione’s time turner as a regular piece of jewelry. You might be surprised to know, I did not go crazy in the gift shop. I just bought a mug and a chocolate frog. But, believe me I was tempted to buy snitches and a broomstick and all that. I did see a woman on the bus with a broomstick. Some child is going to have a happy Christmas.

Towards the end of the tour is Diagon Alley. I think that felt so special because there aren’t cute streets like that in the US. It was tiny, curvy, and cobble stoned. They had a little demonstration about snow and making the footprints when Harry was invisible. I loved Olivander’s. How bad do you want a wand to choose you? After Diagon Alley there were models and drawings and artwork of the sets and scenes. I have said it already, but the attention to detail is immense. People had to design, then carve, the triwizard cup! They had to create Hagrid’s house (photo I didn’t include). I mean there were artists, craftsman, architects, special effects people, designers, etc, etc etc. It was amazing and my description cannot do it justice. But the best object was the giant model of Hogwarts (pictured at the top). It was gorgeous and Charlotte and I agreed we just wanted to shrink down and be in the model.

There was obviously so much time, money, love, and attention that went into making the book a real world. It was overwhelming and outstanding and I kinda want to go back right now. Instead though, I reserved a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone from the library, so I can start with the story all over again.

The post Tourist Tuesday: Harry Potter Studios appeared first on Cooking is Messy.