Hobbiton

Day 3: Route to Rotorua; Glow Worm Caves & Hobbiton

After the Glow worm caves, the group hopped in the bus to head to one of the most recognizable movie sets in cinematic history: Hobbiton. Funny enough, one of the things I remember most about this part of the trip is actually being forced by the Brits into trying my very first “sausage roll”, which is, essentially, just a breakfast sausage log covered in flaky pastry. It was actually quite good, but alas, it was deemed “not authentic” beginning one of the many invitations to visit London for a proper sausage roll.

ANYWAYS, back to the main aspect of our trip. The group parked in a separate parking lot away from the set as they try to control how many people enter the movie set with tour groups of 40 people at 30 mins intervals. After boarding the bus, a video played a little retelling of the story of the sets founding, creation, filming, and eventual adjustment into a tourist attraction. We then disembarked the bus for our group's walking tour around the life size set. The group immediately went into full nerd mode, remembering the amazing films and recognizing the iconic hill Bilbo runs up while exclaiming the iconic line “I'M GOING ON AN ADVENTURE,” which many of us, including myself, attempted to recreate without looking too foolish. Though, I admit that my attempt looks oddly like Jack Sparrow had been transported into the LoTR universe and is now attempting to escape after hearing the rum was gone.

After our walking tour, which included several 20 min breaks to allow us all to take photographic evidence of our childish excitement, we stopped off for a pint of ale at the Green Dragon. If you don't know the significance of that Inn to the LoTR story, then I am sorry, but you will not be hearing it from me. Go learn you some culture.

The significance of this tour extends to more than just our childish excitement of our surroundings, but also a give and take of cultural norms. I was able to introduce my new found friends to the standard vacation pose I have used to begin accumulating photos of interesting places, of which I intend to create an album of photos doing said pose all around the world. In exchange, my British friends introduced me to the unlawful act of “nicking” which is apparently quite prevalent in all British bars. As another one of my vacation rituals of buying pint glasses on each vacation was bearing no fruit, I decided I was not going to be leaving the country without some kind of liquid retaining kitchenware. And so I left Hobbiton with both a teacher's pride and a guilty conscience.Baca lagi