A great time

I promised I would tell about England, so I will. England was amazing. Not everything went right. In fact, if you just look at the weather and what we did, you might think we were very bored and had a terrible time, except for Wednesday. This isn’t true. Yes, the weather was terrible and on Monday and Tuesday it turned out it was a “Bank Holiday”, which turned out to be a celebration for the queen’s jubilee, that had most of the stores closed. Also, it was raining at least a bit every day.

Still, we had a great time. My sister and I weren’t about to let our fun be ruined by some rain and closed stores. On Monday we had an unexpectedly smooth flight. Visiting the airport and finding out where everything is ahead of time really made a difference, I can recommend it to everyone who has trouble with travelling (by plane)! In fact, I actually redirected some other passengers, who were a bit lost with all the different directions, to the right queue.

Once we arrived, we took a taxi to our hotel. I now understand people who complain about taxi drivers. We had the stereotypical foreign guy who was yelling short sentences to communicate. When we arrived and we were about to pay him, he told us “10 pounds more today! Bank Holidays!” We didn’t like that he didn’t tell us that before driving us, but how are we about to discuss that, when he communicates in yelling out short sentences? Also, we were pretty tired and had a lot to progress, so I decided to just pay the man.

After that we dropped off our bags and had lunch at a diner across the street, since we weren’t allowed to check in yet. After that we checked in and took a nap in the hotel room. After the nap, we had a look around in the city centre, I visited Sainbury’s for the first time, and had dinner. (I’m never having McDonalds in England again. Don’t know what they do to the chicken there, but I didn’t like it)

The next day we had a lovely breakfast and spent the day riding the bus, walking around the outer parts of the city, and visiting Wal Mart. I know, Sainsbury’s and Wal Mart don’t sound too exciting for the most of you, but I always read about those stores and never actually saw one, so I got curious. Sainsbury’s simply made me think of the supermarkets in France (like Champion and Auchan for example), but Wal Mart is big!

On Wednesday we had a very special day. The day our whole trip to England was actually based on. The sole reason we chose Watford over all the other cities… Leavesden Studios! Most of you probably still have no clue what I’m talking about. Leavesden Studios is the place where they filmed the Harry Potter movies! Here at home we’re a big fan of Harry Potter and my sister and I just HAD to go see the movie set! For those of you who didn’t know yet: they made a huge museum out of the movie set, with all the sets, props, art designs, etc.

Before we went there, we went to see the Disney store in another part of the city centre. After that we went to Leavesden Studios.

We had a blast at Leavesden Studios. They simply had so much to see there! The estimated time you’ll need to see everything there is 3 hours. We took 3 and a half hours. I swear, if you even remotely like Harry Potter, I can already advise you to go there. If you’re a fan, you simply MUST go there! I’m not going to tell you everything you can find there, since it’ll ruin the surprise if you’re ever going to visit. Just go and see for yourself. I will say 2 things though. The gift shop is huge and amazing and… I got to open the doors to the Great Hall! Thank you so much guide of the tour, I will never forget it! She probably won’t read this, but still.

If you’re ever going there, I’ll give you this piece of advise: be there an hour early. Take 30 minutes to look around at the beginning (yes, it’s worth it) and to visit the tourist shop. Then take another 30 minutes to get in the queue that’s inside the hall. You won’t regret it.

I’ll spare you more excitement from me. I’m seriously holding back, trying not to spray everyone with huge walls of text about how amazing Leavesden Studios is.

Wednesday evening all the walking in Leavesden Studios caught up with me and my temperature shot straight up. I started hyperventilating and was burning up. This is the sad thing about Chronic Fatigue. I’ll always have to pay for having a great day out. Was it worth it though? Yes it was, I’ll never trade my experience at Leavesden Studios in for anything.

Thursday I was still very tired and so was my sister. We went to a park, but it started to rain  pretty heavy. Since we were actually to tired anyway, we went back to the hotel and just decided to spend the day reading.

I finished Aaron Likens’ book, so I decided to start on The Hunger Games, which my sister brought along. The whole of Thursday my sister and I simply slept some and read The Hunger Games. (I read the first book, my sister the second and started with the third, since she already finished the first book. By now, I have arrived at the third book too)

I still didn’t dislike the day. I was actually very relaxed and didn’t mind having a day of absolutely nothing. Isn’t a holiday about regaining your strength anyway?

On Friday my sister and I had breakfast and then returned straight to bed. At 2 pm the taxi would arrive, so we didn’t have much time to do anything else anyways and we were both very sucked into the story we were reading. I have never been so excited about a story written in first person until I started reading The Hunger Games! I can really recommend the books.

At 2 pm we were packed and the taxi arrived. At the airport we had a hard time figuring out where we needed to be. It’s a very small airport, which would in theory be easier, but the signs weren’t really clear to us. Also, when we wanted to ask something, we couldn’t find an information point anywhere and when we asked some lady from the airport, she simply mumbled that we could maybe ask the check-in desk. (which had a huge row in front of it and we didn’t need information for checking in) After a while of searching and starting to panic, a steward (or at least I thought he was) picked up that we needed help and pointed us in the right direction.

Thank you mister! (although he probably won’t read this, just like the tour guide…)

There were many more minor inconveniences which we disliked about Luton Airport. When we were finally in the airplane, my sister and I were in a pretty bad mood. All we wanted by then was just to get home and tell our parents all about Leavesden Studios.

Sorry for the huge blogpost. I hope you all managed to read up to here. If you did: Applause!