For our Winter Break this year, we decided to do a Harry Potter tour of England in honor of Evelyn’s 11th birthday. As I started to plan our journey, I quickly realized that this would need to be our Herndon Harry Potter Tour: Winter Edition because there are a lot of HP things we’d like to do in both Scotland and England that stop operating in October, so we’ll have a Summer Edition someday as well.
After the Pauls picked us up from the airport on Saturday night, we were able to spend Sunday with them before heading into London that afternoon. It was hard to see them so briefly before leaving again, but we knew it would only be for a few days.
We started our tour in London at King’s Cross Station and Platform 9 3/4. The line to get a photo here was crazy long, so we alternated who stood in line and who wandered around the shop. And after all that, the photo was over-exposed and disappointing, and there were 3-4 better trolley-into-the-wall photo ops the next day anyway! Oh well, lesson learned.
We had early morning tickets for Warner Bros. Studios Tour London – The Making of Harry Potter on Monday morning and I’m glad we didn’t schedule anything else that day because it gave us the freedom to stay there as long as we wanted…and then just collapse when we got back to the hotel.
The Ukrainian Ironbelly greeted us the moment we entered HP World. It was decorated for Christmas all the way through, which made everything really festive and cheerful. I think my favorite moment of the entire day was when they opened the doors into the Great Hall. It was incredible.
We spent some time studying the costumes and how they were designed. I’ve always wanted to recreate the Beauxbatons school uniform, so it was fun to see the pattern right there!
Mirror of Erised: “Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.”
(“I show not your face but your heart’s desire.”)
Horcruxes 
Buckbeak! 
Perfectly positioned about 2/3 of the way through the tour was a restaurant where we were able to take a break, grab some food, and try out butterbeer. It was very tasty.
After lunch, we headed outside to see the Knight Bus, the Dursley’s home, the ruins of the Potter Cottage, the covered bridge, and the flying car.
Then we spent quite a bit of time in the creature department and wandering through the special effects gallery.
We visited Diagon Alley for all of our wizarding needs.
And finally, we were able to study Hogwarts itself from all enchanting angles as it lay under a fresh dusting of “snow.” Did you ever realize that those three consecutive towers off of the main tower were Dumbledore’s office?
It was definitely time for a sweet reward at the end of all that walking.
