Harry Potter

Harry Potter obviously changed my life. It made me re-believe that having magical powers was, once again, possible. Since the times of Matilda and Sabrina the teenage witch I've wanted nothing more than to be able to move things with my hands or evaporate from one place to the next. This is because I'm an utterly lazy person. Regardless, we nearly peed our pants when we heard we could get a guided tour of the London that Inspired Harry Potter! Unfortunately my camera must have been on the wrong setting that night because a lot of the pictures look weird.

Anyway we met at Temple station and our tour guide was this cute old guy that wore a vest that would change colors at ever stop. It even turned into the British flag at one point. Between that and his use of firecrackers, he kept us pretty entertained. The first place we went to was an actual film location. He told us that this is the only location filmed in any Harry Potter movie that wasn't touched up with any effects in post production. This place was the Australian Commonwealth (in the UK they have commonwealths/high commissioners instead of embassies/ambassadors). The Australian Commonwealth is where Gringots Bank is filmed :)

He told us that JK Rowling name the famous goblin who opened up the magical bank was named Gringot because there is an old word for gold that is "ingot" and what do goblins do? they growl! so "gr"-ingots=Gringots. Why goblins? Well, JK says that what magical creature would be better suited to work in a bank than these miserable yet clever creatures. Good call.

At this point to security guard was starting to shoo us off of the steps so I only got a couple of pictures and these are the clearest ones. It definitely is Gringots and they filmed the underground Gringots scenes right on this main level of the Australian Commonwealth!



Next we went to the Lyceum Theater which was where he all of a sudden started to talk about vampires. We were all a little confused about it because we were pretty sure this was the Harry Potter tour and we were getting nervous we were on a Twilight tour or something. Anyway that's when he told us what was important was actually on the BACK of the theater.

Behind the theater are three placards enscribed with three literary writers that are important to theater today: Terry, Stoker and Irving. Stoker was the creator of Dracula. And when JK Rowling was writing Harry Potter, this placard inspired her to add Sanguini in the 6th HP book at the Christmas Party. I'll be fair and say I didn't remember a word of this but this speech connected back to the start of the tour where our guide told us he would reveal a lot of history and mythology that inspired JK Rowling's characters.

Like Dumbledore. There is a huge obsession with King Arthur in England as I've said before and apparently JK is into it just as much as the Royal family is. Dumbledore is based off of Merlin which is why he is the principle wizard out of all of them in HP. Albus means white and Dumbldore means "bumble bee" so Albus Dumbledore= white bumblebee and in many passages of the book she will refer to Dumbledore as walking down the corridors humming to himself.

The names Hogwarts, Dumbledore, Weasley and Dursley all come from Rowling's childhood. Also, her best friend as a child was Ian Potter, and her favorite boys name is Harry. So some stuff is purely sentimental for her.

We followed our tour guide to the Coal Hole, a pub nearby. He started to tell us about the concept of the Invisibility Cloak. Rowling never mentions name of the person she stole the idea from in any of her books but apparently he was the cruelest man in the world. Our guide made a joke that this man would sit down next to people and they would say "what do you want" and he would reply "how can you see me, i'm wearing an invisibility cloak only members of the order of (something) can see me" and the man said to him, "no, i can see you". And the crazy old man with the invisibility cloak once asked, "then why don't people ever talk to me?" So maybe he was crazy, maybe he really had the cloak, or maybe people just ignored him so much that he thought he had it. But as legend continues, one day a man was sitting in THIS pub doodling on paper, centuries ago. The man looked up to see this guy (so sorry I forget his name) staring at him. The first man goes back to his doodle. A few minutes later the invisibility cloak guy gets up, walks to the table the first man was sitting at and puts a piece of paper, face down, on his table. The invisibility cloak guys proceeds to leave the pub. The first man was so irked by this (remember he was the world's cruelest man, no one liked to deal with him) that it took him a few minutes before he had the nerve to turn the paper over and see what was written on it. When he finally turned the paper over, he saw that the man had doodled exactly the same image that he himself had been doodling while he was at the pub. Did he have the invisibility cloak? Was he sitting right next to this man as he doodled, copying down the sketch to prove he really did have it? No one knows, but JK threw this idea into her novels.

Cross a few streets to the Metropolitan Police Department. Here it is, the phone booth that takes you into the Ministry of Magic. THIS is the phone booth that inspired her. Dial 6-2-4-4-2 (M-A-G-I-C) and you get right in.


Too bad it was a busy night because we couldn't get close enough to take a picture of the name of the actual pub (people thought we were crazy tourists snapping pictures of the building) but here on the corner of this block is the place that inspired the Leaky Cauldron. I'll have to go back in the day time to see what it's actually like although it did seem pretty appropriate and we definitely could feel how she took this and turned it into the Leaky Cauldron.

Diagon alley. here is the place on Cecil Court that JK spent hours at coming up with the concept of Diagon alley which is a play on "diagonally" the direction she walked to get there or something like that. Similarly, Knockturn alley= nocturnally (something to do with her being there at night, or I'm making that up I'm not totally sure). Anyway it ABSOLUTELY looks like Diagon Alley even though this isn't where it was filmed. The whole time the tour guide reminded us that this was a tour of the London that INSPIRED HP not the places the actual filming happened. This tour was much better anyway because, as he said, film locations never look real when you visit them so you only get disappointed! He explained to us her reason for picking owls over any other animal as the choice pet and showed as that one of these stores is an antique store where inside the window display is an owl. Interesting.

Also, here you can buy HP money!! I have to back track a little because before the insight of Diagon Alley we went to this side alley that was called the Cash Exchange and I was so attentive to the information that I didn't even get any pictures of what was supposed to be important. Apparently, Rowling never mentions where she got the concept of the invisibility cloak as I said earlier. But, she does mention where she got the concept of the philosophers "sorcerers" stone...a man name Nicolas Flamel. Flamel was born in the 1330's but no one knows the actual date of his birth...or death...or even if he is dead. It is literally the most fascinating story I've ever heard. Apparently in a dream one night an angel told Flamel he would find a very important and valuable book one day but he would not be able to read it. The dream made no sense to Flamel so on he went with his life. Until one day, at a book store, he found a book that was in Old Hebrew he purchased without any idea how to read it. He traveled around trying to find someone to crack the code for him and the first person he found able to translate for him died. Eventually, he figured it out and this book led him to the philosophers stone. It is said that when he "died" he ordered that he be buried with his wife and he put a curse on their grave site that anyone who ever dares to open their tombs would be cursed forever. Well years after he died someone hysterically told the story that he met Nicolas Flamel, and this caused panic and someone decided to check the graves. When they opened the graves...they were empty. The "secret" to the stone is that whoever has it has the power of youth and wealth. So Flamel and his wife have been sighted for the last 7 centuries as recently as 1990's enjoying themselves in different parts of the world. This story is the inspiration to HP & the Sorcerers Stone & Hermione (obviously) is the one to make the connection. But now I just think it's the coolest story ever and I want to know the truuuuuuuuuuuuth!