As a lover of all things Harry Potter, traveling to London had other purposes besides visiting the iconic Big Ben or taking a spin on the London Eye.
I wanted to be where Harry Potter had been.
Walking through the streets that inspired Knockturn Alley.
We looked through multiple sites and saw the official Warner Bros. studio tour of the Harry Potter World, which was about 6 hours long including the travel time, since it was outside the city, with only three days in London it was going to be tough to make it. Also it didn’t help that the dates and times available to us were mostly booked.
That’s when we stumbled upon a London map at our hostel that was promoting a free Harry Potter tour around the city.
We immediately planned our day to be part of this tour managed by a company called Strawberry Tours.
We made it to the Leicester Square and started looking for the strawberry umbrellas.
Cristian from Strawberry Tours with the strawberry umbrella.
We found them and now we had a decision to make, have the tour in English (British accent, duh!) or in Spanish. Obviously, you would think English but two of our friends only spoke Spanish so a bit bummed we signed up with Cristian, our Spanish tour guide.
From the moment Cristian introduced himself in a very comical and witty way we were all thrilled to have signed up with him.
He was enthusiastic and had a great way to tell his story and that of Harry Potter, while also giving us history on the beautiful city of London.
As we walked around the city, Cristian had us captivated telling us about the behind the scenes of multiple Harry Potter movies and how the director changed many of the aesthetics in various streets. We walked around the different architecture that inspired J.K. Rowling to create the Harry Potter world we have come to love so much.
The South African Embassy building inspired the architecture for the Gringotts Wizarding Bank.
He gave us a lot of fun facts that had us laughing and excited for each new location we saw.
At the end, I wanted to give him all the money I had on me because he was exceptional. He made our trip to London even more remarkable.
If you ever find yourself in London make sure to take this tour and if you happen to speak Spanish, look for Cristian.
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Great post! I hope I get to go to London soon and take the tour!