A Fortnight with Whit - I'm HERE!

 Well, it's Whit here, the bestest of the siblings of JP, who has made the pond jump to visit this very strange country. I'm guest blogging for part of my trip, according to JP, so here goes.

I arrived on Sunday after a good flight, a quick run through Heathrow and walked out of the airport 45 seconds before JP and Kris walked up to meet me. Thankfully Leeds/Bradford airport is about as small as Charlottetown airport in PEI so there was absolutely no chance of any of us getting lost.

We decided to power-through on Sunday and started our drive back to Loughborough with a quick historical stop at Kirkstall Abbey in Leeds. To get there, we swerved through extremely narrow country roads that honesty don't look wide enough for two cars, especially when they breakneck around the turns at speeds that make your heart jump up into your throat. I decided about 32 seconds into the car ride that I actually don't want to drive in this backwards country cause there is a high probability that I'd kill us, very quickly.

While I appreciated the gorgeous views and ruins built centuries ago, I was still reeling a little bit from being with my bro again. Turns out I like him, a bit. 

 

Oh hey bro!

You couldn't go inside the Abbey without being on an official tour so we walk around the ruins to get a small view of what would have been a very impressive building in it's day.

 JP and Kris being all cute, it only took like four photos for them to stop acting like weirdos - you'd think they'd been alone with each other for 7 months or something.

The Abbey was really the first of many breathtaking views that I've seen on the trip so far. It was an old monestary built in 1152 and it's still mostly standing.

 Part of the Abbey commons

After the abbey we headed back to Loughborough for a quick nap (Kris had one too so I can claim it wasn't due to jetlag) and then re-packed our bags for our London Adventure. I did manage to express my time zone challenges by telling JP "I honestly don't know when I am right now" upon waking up from the nap - it was 1pm in the UK, 9 am in Canada and felt like it was 6pm in my head. Oh the joys of travel.

We hopped in the car - and I tried not to freak out as cars were swerving in a out of lanes on the M1 (one of the major highways).  We met up with Robyn and Whitney for my first English Sunday roast, which wouldn't have been complete without my first pint of guiness! The 2pm roast "dinner" was delicious but strange to be eating and drinking so early in the day.

 First Guiness

Our first tourist-y stop was a must-see for me - the Harry Potter studio tour - so the group of us headed up to Leavesden. This was the place where all the magic happened and the studio has kept the sets, costumes and props from most of the movies for serious nerds to come check out.  

 The stone griffin to Dumbledore's office, it had a 16 ft hole below it to accommodate the stairs that have to rise up from the floor.

 

The entrance to Hogwarts, complete with larger than life stone knights.

 Practicing magic in the Great Hall

 As a true potter-head, I brought my wand with me from Canada and soaked in as much of the experience as I could. Robyn was nerding out too but she doesn't have her own wand so she's not nearly as cool as me.

 Most of Dumbledore

I think this is my favourite, we all dropped our cameras and guides so we actually like kinda like we could be students headed off to school.  

 Hogwarts..the older years?!?

Hanging out on the Hogwarts Express 

It was amazing to see how they put it all together and I had the chance to introduce the delicious, delicious butterbeer to JP, Kris, Robyn and Whitney.

It was well appreciated and reminded me of the copious amounts I drank in Orlando in October...mmmm butterbeer!

The last room was a scaled down (only about 20 ft high) model of Hogwarts and the grounds, it was sooo cool. Even just to see that model was worth it, but the rest of the tour was awesome too.

 

Hogwarts, the mini

After the tour, we drove to Robyn and Whitney's flat where Kris dropped us off for the next three days to tour London (more on that in later posts).  She was a true sport, cause we had her out until all hours of the night even though she had to get up for work in the morning - thanks Kris :)

After roughly 34 hours awake, in 4 timezones (and two daylight savings times) I crashed and slept like the dead.  It was an awesome albeit long first day in the UK.