Our two tours today were a Harry Potter Tour (3 hours) and a Jack The Ripper Tour with “Rippervision” (1 hour). We arrived at King’s Cross Station *way* early, so hung around until the store opened/we were able to get our picture taken. :-)
Here are some photos from inside the Harry Potter store! Got the gal with the Harry Potter license plate (in the rowing parking lot – long story!) a few things, got my mom some Hogwarts socks, and myself a Ravenclaw coffee mug. No, I don’t need another coffee mug, but it’s a super good size and – hello – Ravenclaw ;-)
One of the things that you can see now and again are pieces from the Blitz, up on the sides of buildings:
…but back to the tour. Our tour guide, Sam, was absolutely fantastic. As you can see from the picture, he gets asked by kids on the tour whether he’s a Weasley. (He just says yes.)
We only had a handful of people on the tour, which was great. No young kids, and everyone “kept up.” One pair was a mother and daughter from Germany (though the tour was in English), then the other family were from Salinas – a Mom (not a Potter fan), Dad, and their daughter who had turned 21 the day before.
One of the first things Sam talked about was that when Rowling had written the books, she was on the third book before she “realized” that she had set the railway station to get to Hogwarts at King’s Cross – the station she actually had had in mind was the next one down the line – Euston Station. By that time, however, there were a million books out…so…King’s Cross it is!
The mythical “Platform 9-3/4” is actually next to Platform 5. We also learned that, when Harry and Ron missed the train to Hogwarts and “borrowed” Mr. Weasley’s car to get there instead, St. Pancras station (right across the road) was “nicked” as they flew by.
We left King’s Cross and got on the Tube to Leicester Square. It’s *far* easier than it was the last time I was in London – you can just tap your credit card on the turnstile.
From Leicester Square, we walked to Goodwin’s Court, which was used as Nocturne Alley in the movie. If you don’t recall, Harry was trying to use floo powder to get to Diagon Alley, but accidentally apparated here. People actually *live* on this street, so only one tour group can go through at a time and you have to be quiet. (It is apparently utilized all the time in movies and “period pieces.”). Note the Gryffindor door knocker – we both smiled at the sign. The bottom photo was the back window of a Mexican restaurant that backed on the street, advertising that people should come in to catch the “golden empanada.”
We saw a few other London sights and our fantastic guide told us little snippets of knowledge that I have now edited into the first 2 days of the blog! We learned quite a bit at Trafalgar Square. Admiral Nelson had won the battle of Trafalgar against Napoleon (though Nelson died and Napoleon lived). Because his crew loved him so much, they wanted to get Nelson’s body back from Spain to the U.K. – but it was a long, hot trip. So, they put his bottle into a barrel of brandy (never a shortage of alcohol on British ships.) Unfortunately, the wind being what it was pre-motor-driven ships, they ran out of brandy in the *other* casks before they got home. So, yes . . . They drank the brandy out of that cask. So, to this day, when you pour the brandy out of the bottle, it’s called ‘Tipping the Admiral.’
While the statue of King Charles I is the center of London, he was beheaded and replaced by a “Republic” led by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell, however, abolished drinking, dancing, celebrating Christmas…so the “Republic” lasted a few years, then *he* was hung and King Charles II re-took the throne. People were pretty upset about their forced Puritanism, however, so once King Charles II was coronated, they dug Cromwell back up, beheaded him, and put his head on a pike at Buckingham Palace for all to see!
Leann and I had seen this sculpture honoring the Women of World War II the other day, and Sam told us some facts about it. As you can see, it represents the “uniforms” or clothing worn by all the women, who took on the jobs that the men who had gone to war would have performed. (Of course, unfortunately, once they came back, they were expected just to “hang up” those clothes, as you can see here.) Women built the Waterloo Bridge (also known as the “Ladies’ Bridge”) and Sam told us that it was the only bridge that came in on time and under budget!
We headed over to the Scotland Yard area next. This is where they filmed Hermione, Ron and Harry taking Polyjuice potion to disguise themselves and enter the Ministry of Magic. I’m re-enacting the Polyjuice drinking – Leann is reenacting Ron acting as a lookout.
We stopped at the theatre showing Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – J.K. Rowling’s play takes place after the end of the last book, and involves Harry and Draco’s children. It’s six hours long (!!) – in London, they are still sticking to that, though they have split it into a matinee and then an evening performance. In America, they have shortened it down to three hours! Sam said that it is really worth a see, and that parts of it are even frightening for adults. He also showed us the “same day” box offices, where you can purchase the tickets that haven’t been sold by the various theatres. Tickets ran from about 20-35 pounds, where the actually first-run shows are a multiple of that.
The tour is “A to B” so we did not end at King’s Cross. When we were getting back on the Tube, Sam mentioned that the inside of the Underground had been used many, many times in science fiction movies, especially in Star Wars (and that’s why Star Wars always premieres in London). The station below was used in scenes from Rogue One, episodes 8 and 9.
We had to go back to the room to recover from the walking (Leann’s Apple Watch logged 13,548 steps). After some power napping on Leann’s part (and photo uploading and blog drafting on my part), it was time to get back out and try to spend our pounds!
At the initial restaurant, we were first seated under a cold wind blowing down on the table. Once re-seated, we noticed that the menu proclaimed “CREDIT CARDS ONLY”! (What??) We blamed leaving on how cold the restaurant was, and headed out to try to find a pub to check off Leann’s “eat at a pub” bucket list.
Speaking of cold/warm, it has been the most incredible weather ever in London. All our guides have been commenting on it! It was probably about 28C/82F today, and is going up to *32C* in London tomorrow – !!! (Double it and add 30 for Fahrenheit – it will be within about 2*)
We wound up at “The Coal Hole,” a pub right next to the Savoy. It advertised “Standard Pub Fare,” and didn’t disappoint.
Leann reminded me that one ordered with the bartender at a pub, paid, then the food came out to you. I ordered a chicken pie for her, beef rib and wine for me, and a lager. Then, I taught Leann how to eat “The English Way” – in other words, stabbing a piece of food, then piling the other tastes up the back of the fork “behind” it. We both remarked that, while completely foreign, the fork *does* fit better in your mouth that way!!
Our final tour of the evening was a Jack The Ripper Tour with “Rippervision.” Can’t say that I can recommend it, frankly. The group was exceptionally big and, though the guide was super knowledgeable as a “historian and 35 year Ripperologist,” it was really too bright out for the “Rippervision” (he used a book of photos until the very end, and even then it didn’t work that well).
I guess what we had expected was something more like … movies?…showing what it was like? Not quite sure. But it was just projections (of the same photos that the guide had in the book), made on a wall. They’re photos you’ve likely seen before, if you have any interest in Jack the Ripper (which I do). The advertising photographs in Get Your Guide for this tour were *definitely* misleading. The guide also projected the photos (touted as “Rippervision”) onto walls and columns, and often they were impossible to see. As I said – frustrating.
Some of the things that we found out was that it was 4 pence to stay in a “doss house” for the night (in a shared bed), or you could pay 2 pence to sleep standing up with your arms over a rope. The rope would be cut down at 6 a.m. This is where the term “hangover” comes from.
Jack London had come down to this area, and wrote People of the Abyss about the inhabitants.
Another frustrating issue (which I will state in a review, likely) is that the bulk of the actual historical areas are long gone. So, you stood in a (completely empty) huge retail area that Boris Johnson had built (having razed the beautiful 1800s buildings that were there), and were told “well, this is what used to be here.” It happened time and time again. In actual fact, the only 2 things that you saw that were original to the Jack The Ripper story was the 10 Bells Bar, and an alley where the women would “duck in” to “earn their money.” (And apparently still do today…guide told us not to lean against the walls. Eeeee-yew!)
There were dozens and dozens and DOZENS of people doing “Jack the Ripper” tours in the area. Honestly – at least six, seven groups (and our group alone had 40+). Considering basically *none* of the places that you imagined you would see are even in existence any more…would I say that *any* “Ripper tour” is worth it? Not really. The area is too gentrified to see anything original – which meant that what you saw were photos in a book of the areas. Readily available via Google. Hmm.
The guide kept us standing for about half an hour at the end, running through his theory of who the Ripper had been. He made a convincing argument, but standing for that long was *exhausting*! Worse, there were both stairs and a bench area where he could have had us all sit down. Suffice it to say, it sounds like the Johnny Depp movie “From Hell” espouses his theory – so we might want to rent that when we get home.
The photos below are from the tour – clockwise from the top:
*The Ten Bells Bar (named for the 10 bells in the church to its right). Our guide had lived above it for a while in the ‘90s and told us stories about the Victorian woman ghost in green…
*The headstones that were pulled up to make a park next to the church, no, the bodies were not dug up…and it became a place for the homeless to sleep in the filth and rats….
*A Society run for free by nuns (Women in one door, Men through another – just not enough beds)…
*One of the few alleys in the area still somewhat how it was back in Jack The Ripper’s time (and used partially for Diagon Alley in Harry Potter)….
*A store I just loved! “A noted house for Paper Bags”!!….
*homes (now selling for over L6 million) originally built by silk weavers – the glassed in areas at the top were where they set up their looms, situated to take best advantage of the sun….
*Corner house of these houses featured in Enola Holmes, TV show with Millie Bobby Brown playing Sherlock Holmes’ younger sister (super fun)…aaaaand…
*Some Elephants. ;-)
Leann and I caught an Uber back to the hotel…Though the walk ended close to one of the Tube stations, we couldn’t face being on our feet for even one more second. Frankly, I’m a little concerned what our final tally will look like for transport, as we have been using my credit card. Due to our hotel not being super close to a Tube station, we have chosen to use Uber or black cabs the bulk of the time – which are, of course, far more expensive than going underground.
Things we wanted to get to but just didn’t:
*St. Martin-In-The-Fields “tea in the Crypt”
*Harrod’s
*Sketch London
*Portobello Road Market…
Just not enough time (or, rather, not enough time when we wanted to be on our feet!)
Time to pack!!