Of course the books are better than the movies, but I love to compare and contrast the movies and the books. (Compare and contrast...am I a teacher or what???)
Why Harry Potter for our honeymoon? This is was brought us together, besides love and God of course. If you don't know the story it's a good one.
Flash back to August 2013: Trevor and I had been friends since he got home from his mission and started attending the singles ward. We weren't super close but we'd hang around each other. I recall at the YSA conference Trevor and I got into a discussion about Harry Potter, I didn't realize how much he liked it until he said he whittled his own wand while on his mission. I stared at him with wide impressed eyes and said, "No you didn't!" He said he'd show it to me sometime if I didn't believe him. This is where I thought, 'Why aren't we better friends?'
Here's us at said YSA Conference...before it got all mushy.
After our mutual love of Harry Potter was known, I mentioned wanting to have a HP movie marathon around Halloween and he was in...but we didn't find anyone else to join us. (Hmmm.) We started the marathon and realized it was going to have to be a weekly movie because it was too much to do in one sitting. We started to watch one movie a week for the next eight weeks. It was so much fun. Every week I'd come over to his house and we'd watch a Harry Potter movie, sometimes out on the screened in porch, in the cold months of October and November...and sometimes with hot chocolate. After the movie we'd just talk, the first time this happened I stayed at his house until 1 am! We'd never talked that long, I didn't know it was possible, but this became the norm. Watch a movie, talk until 1 in the morning, go home and wonder what was going on...
When we concluded our Harry Potter marathon is when we finally kissed.
Because of the geeky story you just read, we decided to make this trip all about Harry Potter, focusing on so many other things would have made the trip work....and after the wedding we wanted this to be a vacation; just take it easy and relax. For example, at the resort we could get up at the beautiful hour of 5:30am to catch the shuttle and get into the parks an hour earlier than everyone else...I will say we did NOT take advantage of this "perk". We slept in everyday...well on the first day I was so excited I made Trevor get up at 7:30...he wasn't too keen on it but did it anyways.
Totally worth it!
We went to Hogsmeade first and Trevor of course ran straight to Honeydukes. (If you don't know Harry Potter I'm sorry I won't be explaining all of these places...ehem...read the books.) The plotting started...what were we going to buy. Oh the possibilities. Of course everything is over priced so we wanted to be smart about this...things we wanted to try like Butterbeer and souvenirs.
We saw the wait time for the Hogwarts ride was one 30 minutes so we hopped in line. It was...FREAKING AWESOME! I mean it. Everything you want in a Harry Potter ride was there, it was older so the graphics weren't as good or in 3D but I didn't care...I loved it. We went on it twice (not in one day).
We took the Hogwarts Express....
and went to London so we could check out Diagon Alley.
Secret entrance....
Wizarding Bank
This is where we went on the other attraction for Harry Potter World and the line was 2 hours and 30 minutes...and looked like this:
So happy it was 100 degrees out!
The ride was good (this one was in 3D) but not worth the hype! If it had been like the Hogwarts ride where we got on the ride in thirty minutes it would have been better, but we had time and we weren't going to go to the new Diagon Alley without seeing the Gringotts ride.
The souvenirs...
Look at those wands! They chose us.
Okay, okay we went with the wand that went along with our birthday. Each interactive wand that isn't a "character" wand also has a description of your personality. We looked at our birthday wands and then read the description and they fit (should have taken a picture of the personality description!) so we got them. The best part to me was that Trevor's and my wand look very similar. We were meant to be.
Oh and look how cute Trevor is using his wand....he couldn't wait...
When you wave it correctly water would come out of the object...it was hilarious when people got wet and didn't realize why!
Not a souvenir but still very worth it was Butterbeer. The food was okay, but too pricey...my "fish and chips" weren't authentic enough for me.
Frozen Butterbeer at the Leaky Cauldron to cool me off...
Trevor drinking his like a man...sans the straw. (NOT Frozen)
It was a great trip! We spent some time at the resort, got sunburned, ate a million lunch meat sandwiches, and had the best vacation of our lives. I suggested everyone have a honeymoon if you can...I can't imagine going back into life with out having that time to ourselves.
Although we did have a little visitor...
Just saw her at the wedding but I didn't even care...never enough Valerie!
Now we are getting settled in our apartment...but it's definitely back to real life. We now have a whole bookcase shelf dedicated to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter...although all of the candy is gone.
~Arica Baker
No comments:
Post a Comment