The last full fay of our London adventure this time around resulted in the five of us breaking into three parties. Shelby went to Greenwich to see the Fan Museum and explore Greenwich itself, while Neuf and Brianna went to Buckingham Palace to (somewhat) see the changing of the guard – it was crowded, so they did not see very well. They visited some stores as well. All three of them met up early in the afternoon at St. Paul’s, where we were all to rendezvous at 3:15.

Meanwhile, to help make up for the lack of supper last night, I took Meredith to a breakfast buffet. With a view. Darwin’s is a restaurant that is part of the Sky Garden, which is a real garden at the top of the 20 Fenchurch Street building (nicknamed “The Walkie Talkie). The garden is on the thirty-seventhish floor (depending on if you are using the American or British floor numbering system), and the restaurant looks right down on the Thames, with great views of Tower Bridge.

Normally, I can’t stand heights. But I thought I would try it this time, since I knew Mer would love it. It turned out to be great – we were in a restaurant, sitting at a window, which overlooked a larger lounge space about two stories below.  Though the glassed-in lounge space had an outdoor terrace, the terrace wasn’t directly below us.  So I was quite removed from the edge and could not see straight down. The food was expensive – about thirty to thirty-five dollars each for the buffet – but the service was top-notch, the food was excellent, and it was serving as two meals for us. Since it costs even more than that to go up to the observation deck of London’s highest building (the Shard), getting to sit for an hour while eating excellent food was a solid deal.

After brunch, we wandered around the garden, which is free to the public with reservations made online. Since the reservations limit the number of people allowed up at one time, the garden did not feel overcrowded, and the layout allowed us to look out in all directions. Mer wanted to try the terrace, and I tried it, but had to beat a hasty retreat from the height. It was a slow-paced and pleasant morning.

We regrouped at the apartment and then headed out to the St. Paul’s area. We wanted to explore St. Bartholomew the Great, a church of which we had seen the exterior during the walk the other night. It is London’s oldest church, from about 1145. We had a little trouble finding it since I was relying on memory of the walk and on maps in my head, but we did get there eventually. The church was almost empty, and we got to walk around it at our own pace. There were several modern religious artworks installed next to inscriptions from 1600, and they were moving – there was a modern statue of St. Bart holding his own skin (he was flayed alive), an abstract but identifiable crucifixion, a modern painting take on Mary and Jesus, an excellent terra cotta statue of Jesus coming out of an old stone coffin for his resurrection, and some glass work. The church has been the site of several movies, including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Richard II, and even, so we were told, a scene from one of the Transformer movies.

We left St. Bart’s to get back to St. Paul’s, stopping briefly at a park that had been planted where a Wren-designed church used to be. It had been bombed out during World War II, and the altar wall still survives, along with some window casings down the sides. The interior of the church has been planted with plants in a way to show where the pews used to be. It is a lovely use of the space.

We had lunch just outside of St. Paul’s, and then we met the others there at 3:15, so we could start our trek out to the Warner Brothers Studio just outside of London, to go see the Harry Potter Studio Tour. It took a good two hours to get there from St. Paul’s, party because we happened to take a train that stopped frequently. But get there we did, and it was pretty amazing.

Warner Brothers has dedicated two former studio buildings to provide  permanent housing for props and costumes and sets from all eight of the Harry Potter movies. They have exhibits on how things were designed, and full sets of rooms, such as Dumbledore’s office and Harry’s bedroom at Hogwarts. These are the actual sets that were used in the films. We got to hear, from the people who actually made things, about how sets were constructed, or how special effects were done. To my great surprise, the effects people preferred to use real props as much as possible, resorting to computer-generated effects only as cost or safety demanded. Even then, they usually tried to have some real props as a base from which to start, so, for example, Harry might be fighting a snake with a real prop head and a computer body. It was great fun to get to see how they did it.

By sheer luck, we were there on the first day of the preview opening of the Gringott’s Bank set – the staff themselves only saw it for the first time last night. It was the entire Gringott’s lobby, in full scale – huge. It was pretty jaw-dropping. They also had behind-the-scenes looks at how the vaults were made for the films – again, a mixture of real props and computer animation.

The exhibit had a full-sized section of Diagon Alley, and a near-full-sized Platform 9 3/4, with the Hogwart’s Express sitting in it. The winner of the tour was saved for last, with an incredibly detailed scale model of Hogwarts itself – it must have been fifty feet across, and had several levels and included lots of landscaping. It is hard to do it justice from description, but it was a real “Whoa!” moment.

We took the faster train back to the city, and so our touring for this trip ends. Tomorrow we get launched at 7:00 am (3:00 am EST), and should get home sometime around 9:00 pm if all goes well. We have had a wonderful time with great weather and good success at seeing lots of things.