HAPPY CHRISTMAS

Merry Christmas is American, apparently. So... Happy Christmas!

Hiya

I hope you all had a very happy Christmas! 

I stayed in England and celebrated with my host family. On the 24th, Christmas eve, extended family came over and there was an enormous buffet made by my host brother and his uncle. I tried to help but ended up just tasting everything. While waiting for the food to be ready and my host mum to get back from work, we watched telly. We watched 'Coming of age', which is.. unusual. It's a bit too crude for me but my brother loved it..

In the evening, all the aunts and cousins and grandmothers came over. The food was brilliant :D. In the evening we watched 'Fast And Furious' because I said I've never seen it. Didn't like it either but oh well. 

On Christmas day we opened our presents in the morning. I got some really amazing music from my brother - Ben Howard and , of course, Ed Sheeran. Yup, we're both a bit obsessed - but he's definitely worse than me:P. I've never heard of Ben Howard.. well, before Jay told me about him.but he seems rather big according to his youtube views. He's incredible!! and British! We had turkey with gravy, Yorkshire puddings and potatoes. Oh, and we pulled Christmas crackers:). We don't have them at home but they're mentioned in Harry Potter, so I've heard of them. 

You get a joke, a paper crown and a toy. My toy wasn't really a toy.. I got a shoehorn:D.

I didn't know which one to show you, but that's the one I saw first:)

Ben Howard - Old Pine

On the 26th I went to a family party with my brother. I tried Scotch Egg, which is all right I guess, but I like it because it reminds me of Celebrity Juice :P. I also started catching up on 'The Inbetweeners' over the holidays. My brother told me to. So far I really like it :). A bit crude as well. 

I also started sending letters home. It was really strange - I've never had to do that before (except for the occasional postcard). I had to tell the woman at the post office how expensive the things are that I'm sending off. That kind of ruins the present though, because she wrote it on the envelope (what's inside and what it's worth):/. Oh, and I had to pay 10£ for about 6 letters..

I'm not sure what I'm doing on New Year's Eve yet. My family has to work the next day, so I won't be able to celebrate with them. I'm probably going out with some of the exchange students..

Hope you're enjoying the holidays xxx

Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, London

Heey. After we came back from the Harry Potter Studio, we had 3h left in London. It was very busy (Friday evening) and we didn't fully know where we were. We saw loads of lights and then tried to find the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. First we went to eat some Chinese though. We hadn't had anything the whole day except for Butterbeer...

 10£ :)

Then we went to Starbucks and then walked up to Hyde park. The Winter Wonderland is really lovely and I think it stays open until the 6th of January, so I definitely want to go again. We only had an hour and it's HUGE. We were only able to walk through the whole thing once and then we had to leave again.

There also is an ice rink, which looks very, very lovely:)

Oh, and there was a circus as well but the queue was quite long but I'd like to go some time. 

Took us about half an hour to get back to the Victoria station. It's still very confusing to me (and my friend wasn't of much help:P) as there are two Victoria coach stations - I think one's for arrival and one for departure. We went to the departure one but we couldn't find the right coach back to Bristol. We asked an employee but he didn't care, because he worked for national express. We made it on our designated coach on the last second. Turns it was on the wrong gate, it wasn't actually a megabus and the sign that said Bristol had fallen off :/. I think that's a plus for national express as well: Their buses seem to be much more commonly used.

On the way home we saw all the pretty Christmas lights :).

That's Harrods :)

That was definitely one of the best days I've spent since I've gotten here. LOVED the Studio ktour and also just spending time in London.. I'm probably going again this holiday.

I also went out for tea with some girls from school this week. We went to Za Za Bazaar near the Hippodrome in Bristol.. REALLY GOOD!

There was a buffet with food from all over the world; I finally had my sushi!!!:D. The girls even gave me some Christmas present for my 'first Christmas here':) , which was really lovely. I went to a friend's house before to watch some telly and she said she's going to take me to Bath for some sushi:D she loves it as well.

Have a lovely Christmas and thank you so much for reading 

Alex xxx

Harry Potter Studio Tour, Leavesden

Hiya! Sorry, I already wanted to do this post last weekend but then I didn't have any internet connection and I was lazy during the week.. but yesterday was my last day at school:) now I've got two weeks off.

OK, so.. I went to the Harry Potter Studio in Leavesden last Friday (14/12/12) with a friend. It was absolutely incredible and I really, really recommend it! They're still saying they'll be closing in 

March '13 but my friend and me reckon they're going to announce it's getting extended.. We both really want to go again and they've probably made millions! For an adult it costs 28£ but we had to pay 55 quid each and a bus with GoldenTours from Buckingham Palace Road to Leavesden was included

In the morning I had to get up at 5 o'clock again but my friend's dad drove us into town, which was really nice and made it much easier. Our coach left at 6.45 from Colston Hall (the Mcfly concert is going to be there). We went with megabus not with national express like last time I went to London. We payed about 35£ for a return for the both of us. I reckon megabus is less expensive than national express (I also got some % off because of my NUS card;)), but it also was less comfortable. When you drive with national express, they bring you from one place to another without any kinds of stopovers. When we got on the coach in Bristol, it drove there from Cardiff and was already quite packed. We also had another stop at Bristol UWE. 

When we arrived in London at the Victoria coach station we had one hour to waste. Then we took the bus to Leavesden. It was really cool. I think they were built especially for the HP tour. They were very modern and they played HP soundtracks throughout the whole trip - it took us about one and a half hours. Then we finally arrived:)

everything was decorated for Christmas especially:)

Our tour started at 1pm and there was a big queue, but we only had to queue for about 10 minutes. They lead us into a room - maybe about 50 of us? hard to say. We got shown a film and then..

 the Great Hall was revealed

This post might be an overdose of photos.. oh well.

Afterwards they lead us into the next room, where all kinds of differents sets were put up:

Gryffindor common room

 the boys' dormitory

 ..and His suitcase :)

us in the mirror of Erised (=Nerhegeb)

Dumbledore's office

We also got the opportunity to pay for some 'professional' pictures, which we took;)

It was a bit weird pretending to be flying a car in front of a green screen but it was worth it. The pictures were pretty expensive but we bought four together for 20, so it wasn't too bad. We also took pictures flying a broom.

yap, I took photos of photos of animals:)

 

... then we went outside:)

 We bought some butterbeer!! It looks so strange but actually tastes really really good. The foamy part is really weird though.. it kept on building bubbles which then popped..:/ but still really tasty. 

She said it tastes like cream soda. I've never tried that, but I definitely will now:). And I also really need to do it myself. There are loads of recipes online..

where it all began;)

dementors

Diagon Alley!

hogsmead

the Whomping Willow

                                   

the Gryffindor Common Room

 There were some really amazing paintings:

And the most incredible thing came at last: 

All of the wide shots of the castle were made with this model apparently. They just put it in front of a green screen.

Then we got into a room with wands all around. All the people on the labels were working on the films in some way:) There was some bloke working there who showed you where someone with your first name was.. quite cool job:P. 

Dumbledore:)

and J.K. Rowling

All the employees were really lovely actually and it didn't seem acted.. They genuinely seemed really happy working there.

We had to catch the bus back to London at 4.15pm so we spent about 3 hours 45 mins at the studio. We spent the last hour at the shop though:). It was really cool but some of it was ridiculously expensive. You could buy Dumbledore's robe for about 300 quid! And there was some really useless stuff:P :

 Wands cost about 20£ as well:/

They also sold a notebook with the Harry Potter Leavesden Studio logo on the front of it for nearly 20£! That's more expensive than an actual Harry Potter book! I actually only bought some sweets (a chocolat frog and Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans)

We took the bus back to London and arrived at about 6 o'clock.

I hope you're having a lovely weekend xx