The first day Steph got here, Friday, I went to meet her at the airport nice and early (hello 6 a.m., haven't seen you in a while). We came back to Royal Holloway and relaxed for a little bit and then got ready to head out to the Warner Bros. Making of Harry Potter Studio Tour.
In case the name doesn't give it away, it's a 3-hour tour of the studio where they filmed many of the Harry Potter movies which has now been turned into an exhibition of the props, sets, costumes, etc. I've been dying to go since the second I got here but knew that I would appreciate it a thousand times more with my die-hard Potterhead sister by my side. Unfortunately getting there wasn't very easy either. All in all, I probably spent over 6 hours traveling that day but it was definitely worth it.
The tour was amazing and I easily could have spent way more than 3 hours there. There was so much to see and do. Steph got to try Butterbeer for the first time, which she loved. It's only sold in two places in the world (the studio tour and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando) and I've tried both which is pretty cool! However, my favorite part of the tour, hands down, was at the end where you turn this corner and are greeted by an exact replica of Hogwarts. It was a dream come true for any Potter fan.
The next day we went into London in the afternoon and showed Steph some of the major tourist sites like Big Ben, House of Parliament, the London Eye and Westminster Abbey and took pictures in front of each of them. Then we killed time until 9:30pm when we boarded a bus to Paris!
While the bus was extremely cheap, I can definitely see that it wasn't the most comfortable way to travel. It would have been fine if we were just driving straight all night but unfortunately we had to keep stopping and even had to get off for an hour and a half to take a ferry across the English Channel (which they definitely did not mention beforehand). Regardless, we got a little sleep and arrived in Paris at 7:30am.
Obviously I haven't experienced this as much since I've been studying in an English speaking country but the language barrier hits you like a ton of bricks. The two years of French I took in middle school didn't come back to me as easily as I expect. However, after wandering around for well over an hour we found our hostel.
As far as hostels go, the one we stayed at was very nice. They were so helpful and kept giving us maps and marking how to get where in the city. We had a private room for 4 with two bunk beds and a private bathroom so it was much nicer than sharing a dorm with other strangers. We couldn't check in until 3pm though so we dropped off our bags and hit the city.
We decided to spend the day at the Palace of Versailles because, for some reason, it and a lot of other attractions were closed on Monday. Even though the wait was horrible the palace itself was incredible. After seeing how big the palaces in England are you think you'll never see anything as extravagant but this beat all the other ones by miles. We spent a few hours exploring there and only left out of sheer exhaustion.
That night we had our first proper French dinner which was out of this world! I tried steak tartar, which as you can see in picture below, is literally raw meat. The only difficult part was trying to understand the menus and ordering the food but luckily our waiter was helpful and together we bridged the language barrier to have a very good first dinner.
Well, that's it for this post! Don't worry, there will be more pictures of delicious food to come. Until then, au revoir!
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