It all began with snagging tickets to a play. Not just any play, of course. It was Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, written by good ol' J. K. herself, next installment in the series, and completely canon. How could we not try to buy tickets?
At the time, I hadn't even expected to get them. The whole system for buying tickets was lottery-based, and I had to wake up to 3 AM in the morning to get into the queue. Once that was accomplished, I had to wait for one and a half hours until my number came up, as I was over 10,000 in line. At that point, I nearly gave up hope of getting even the worst of seats. But, here we are. Once my turn in line came up I managed to get 6 tickets (that was the max) to a preview showing in July. All that was left was to find 5 people to go with me and plan an entire trip to London. Piece of cake, right?
Those people turned out to be my siblings, Niko and Lindsay, my cousin Brittany, a friend from college, Casey, and his friend Kjelsie. Ever single one of us huge Potter nerds. My family members and I decided to extend the trip into a short tour of London, Ireland, and Scotland, and our journey is just beginning.
We all met up at the airport with little issue, but all exhausted from a long day of traveling. The tube ride from Heathrow to our AirBnB was one of the longest hours of my life. Looking forwards to arriving at our flat and crashing, we were sorely disappointed. Things with our AirBnB have been...tumultuous, to say the least. Luckily everyone has been enormously good sports about it, and it hasn't dampened anyone's spirits in the slightest. I'll get into the AirBnB later in this post. In fact, it probably deserves a post all of its own.
Regardless, we spent the first day just attemptint to relax. We left the AirBnB in search of a peaceful park, which proved a bit of a journey. The nearest park we found on google maps turned out to be a swampy wildlife reserve full of ducks, squirrels, and lots of bugs. But we eventually ended up at a little grassy steppe nearby a canal, where we wiled away the time with cards, books, and naps. We ate dinner at a nearby Ethiopian restaurant which had huge flat pancakes that you used to pick up and eat various saucy dishes. Sorry I don't have any pictures of this day...we were all pretty near passing out at this point.
It was near 7 when we got back to our room, and 15 minutes later all 4 of us were completely passed out, sleeping for 12 hours straight.
The next day we headed off into London! Our first stop was the Palace Theater, where we picked up our tickets for later that evening.
Next was off to Trafalgar's Square to see some of the famous sights of London. We spent the morning wandering around the National Gallery, an amazing art museum in central London. I forsee us visiting plenty of museums in the next few days, as they are completely and totally FREE, one of the very best things about England, in my opinion.
The National Gallery
Monument in Trafalgar's Square
After that is was we walked Central London, visiting the most famous tourist sights: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and London Bridge.
Lindsay, Niko, and Brittany hanging out in front of Big Ben
Note, this is not London Bridge, this is Tower Bridge (the veiw from London Bridge)
Turns out London Bridge is actually pretty boring, who knew?
Last part of the day before heading off to the Cursed Child was visiting St. Paul's Cathedral. This one we had to think about because unlike all of the museums in London, the cathedrals are NOT free. Entry costed a whopping 18 pounds, which was enough money to give us pause. But entrance got you access to the cathedral itself, as well as the crypts and the upper galleries. Lindsay ended up heading back to the AirBnB as her knee was hurting and she didn't want to climb all the steps, but Brittany, Niko, and I headed in and it ended up being my favorite part of the trip so far. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed inside, but the outside can give you a small idea of the magnificence awaiting us inside.
The whole thing was just amazing: huge marble statues, gold enamel on everything, huge paintings and glittering mosaics on the towering ceilings. The building was absolutely massive, and its size combined with the jaw-dropping decor was awe-inspiring. Going down to the crypts, there were massive grave toppers, and people buried both in the walls and the ground. And the exhausting climb into the 3 different galleries made the amazing view of London from the top that much sweeter.
You can't see it in the picture, but we're all soaked in sweat.
We spent so much time wandering around St. Paul's Cathedral, that we only had time to stop quickly by the AirBnB to change, and then headed straight over to the play.
You're darn right I wore my Gryffindor tie.
In as few of words as possible: IT. WAS. AMAZING. I won't give a synopsis here because either you're reading this before the script is released to the general public, and in that case I'm not allowed to talk about it (#keepthesecret), or the script has already been released and you can look up a summary online that is probably far better than I could ever give. Suffice to say that the play takes place 18 years or so after the end of the last book, and centers around Harry Potter and his son Albus. Harry Potter is very much still Harry Potter, just grown up, and Albus is very much NOT like Harry Potter. He goes to Hogwarts, befriends Scorpius Malfoy, and they get up to all sorts of trouble, trouble which starts out light-hearted and funny, but which quickly becomes deathly serious.
The whole thing was just an incredible experience, it's difficult to put into words. I've always loved Harry Potter, I've grown up with the books and all that. So seeing the play, and seeing it done well, meant a lot to me. I was prepared to enjoy it simply because it was another part of the Harry Potter saga. But my expectations were completely blown out of the water by this play. The story itself was clever and engaging,. The actors were phenomenal and really captured the essence of the characters while giving them an older, more mature feel. And the stage effects were simply stunning. It felt as though you were watching actual magic happening on stage before your very eyes: characters casting spells with flicks of their wands, being sucked into telephone booths and bookcases, dementors swooping just above the crowd, people transforming via polyjuice potion right on stage. It was really unlike anything I had ever seen before.
More than just a good Harry Potter experience, it was a phenomenal play standing all on its own. Ending in a tantalizing cliff hanger, I can only hope that Part II proves to be just as thrilling.
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