Know Knock
Whos there?
You know.
You know who?
He's dead, you can say his name now.
Ooh Harry Potter
This might be
my all time favorite entry of all
time to write!!! Since getting to London this entry has been on my MUST DO
list! This one is for all my fellow geeks!
Shortly before
leaving to come back home for a visit I went on a walking tour of Harry Potter
spots in London. The Harry Potter Series has long been my favorite, both the
books and movies. I booked the tour through the same company we used for our
Beatles tour (Celebrity Tours in London)
and again I was not let down. Our tour guide was super informative not just
about the Harry Potter spots, or Harry Potter but made sure to point out other
landmarks and gave us some more London knowledge to go along with our tour. It
was because of her that I found out about going into the Memorial to the Great
Fire in the last entry. I had seen it and walked past it once but had no clue
that you could go up inside!
I went on the
tour alone since Nick has not a clue about ANYTHING
Harry Potter related. I dragged him to the final movie and he was so confused!
We started in Leicester
Square near the Odeon cinema where all the films had their premiere. It’s the
largest single film cinema in the world. They only play one movie at a time,
usually a British film. (Most British cinemas are full of American movies!)
We walked
along the route of where they had the red carpet for the final premiere which
went all the way to Trafalgar Square a half mile away!. This also happens to be
the place where in the fourth movie, I believe, they
put the shadow of the death eaters symbol over top the square.
Along the way
to the square we went down an alley along Charring Cross Road. When interviewed
J.K. Rowling has been reported to say that she was inspired for Diagon Alley by a small alley off
Charring Cross Road, which has maintained the Victorian shop fronts.
It was the
cutest little alley that you would have totally just walked past if you didn’t
know it existed. It had loads of old bookshops
selling first editions and collectable shops with model airplanes and cars. A
signed copy of a first edition of Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone just
sold in the shop for over £1000!!!
There was one shop which is probably the shop that the bookshop was inspired by
had all sorts of odd books and a psychic in the window doing Tarrot Card &
Psychic readings.
In Charring
Cross Square there’s a set of arches that used to be positioned at the entrance
to Buckingham Palace prior to Green Park that is now for sale if anyone has an
extra £50,000 and wants to buy them for me I’d
not complain ;)
We went down
to Parliament Square and saw the building at the Ministry of Defense they used
as the “visitor’s entrance” to the
Ministry of Magic when Harry went in for his court hearing in the fifth film.
They did a lot of editing to some of
the scenery in London to make it more mysterious looking. Here they took out
the street barricades and a telephone pole. The arch you see to the left was
moved over to the right of the door and went across the street rather than
across the alley. In the movie scene the red telephone box is positioned just
between the window and door in the picture here.
We hopped on a
ferry and went down river and got off near the Globe Theatre and headed into
the Southbank side of London. Back when London was first built the City of
London ended at the Thames River, so everything
illegal in the city took place on the south side, like Theatre,
Prostitution, Drinking and other wild activities. Because of this, the North
side of the London has much wider streets as they had to make room for horse
drawn carriages that the wealthy and Royalty in the city would have, and the
south side has always been more brick, smaller roads with more alleys. The
North side of London has that grand feel still where as the south side feels
more mysterious and dark. A lot of the filming for the fourth movie on took
place on the south side of London because of this.
The oldest
known prison in the world is just on the Southbank near the Globe Theatre. It’s
called The Clink. It was known for
having the worst conditions than any other prison. They would not feed their
prisoners at all. They had windows with bars, which allowed them to beg for
work and for food scraps. If they were unsuccessful they starved.
When we came
off the ferry we were near the “Wobbly
Bridge.” This is the bridge that the Deatheaters destroyed in the last
movies. The producers chose this bridge simply because it had the least amount
of work to destroy it on the computer! It’s a low suspension footbridge (the
only bridge without a rail line or road, simply a footbridge that crosses the Thames)
that opened in the early 2000’s. The first day it opened Londoners flocked to
the bridge to cross it only to discover it literally wobbled from side to side. People boycotted the bridge and it was
closed and reopened two years later without the wobbles! Everyone still calls
it the Wobbly Bridge though J
We went to a
market just on the river to see the location of the entrance to The Leaky Cauldron from the fourth
movie on.
When Warner
Bros bought the movie rights to the books, J.K. Rowling was insistent that they film everything in
London and keep the feel of London true. The entrance to the Leaky Cauldron
sits under a rail bridge so if you listen to the scenes where Harry is staying
in the room at the Leaky Cauldron you can hear the trains going by.
We crossed the
London Bridge and got to see the shots of the Tower Bridge and City Hall, which
are shown throughout the series and used on the movie posters, and of course
anywhere you see London! We headed back to the North side of London to the Bank
area to Leadenhall Market.
The market was
part of London before the Great Fire and parts of the Market were destroyed
with the fire, there are marks inside with dates of rebuilding to what the
market is now. The market is home to the Leaky Cauldron entrance in the first
Harry Potter movie.
We hopped on
the Tube at the Bank station and headed to Kings
Cross! Any Potter fan knows exactly what is coming next!! However you’d be
surprised to know a few things! When J.K Rowling wrote the first book and of
Harry’s first experience on Platform 9 ¾
she wrote of Kings Cross even though she was picturing Euston Station, which is just
down the street, an older station full of brick arches. Kings Cross had a fire,
which destroyed half of the station, in the 1980’s.
When the
producers began to look at filming at the station they knew the modern look of
Kings Cross wouldn’t do, so for external shots they used St Pancreas station
right across the street.
They were able
to find just a few archways inside of Kings Cross so to keep true to the books
they shot the scenes near platforms 3&4/5 & 6
Of course the
absolute highlight of my tour, and quite possibly my trip to London so far was
getting the photo op at “Platform 9 ¾”
with the cart going into a brick wall! They were nice enough to not put it near
any actual platforms so that all tourists can get the photos without having to
have a train ticket.
I need to
watch the movies again so I can see all of the London spots in the movie. I
catch myself more and more being able to identify where in London movies or TV
shows I’ve seen since getting over there are shot.
