Nebelhom's Miscellaneous: There and Back Again - A Visit to Hobbiton (23.3.2014)

When we woke up this morning, we could not really decide which muscles on our body hurt most, but for a fact, we couldn't find a section that didn't. Since we are no strangers to pain and sore muscles, we expertly rolled ourselves clumsily out of bed, landed face first on the floor, crawled towards the kitchenette, used the fridge as both source of breakfast as well as support to get ourselves onto our feet... scrap the "we" make it "I" ;)

Anyhow, getting cleaned up in a semi-coordinated fashion, we looked what the weather suggests for this fine Sunday... Just a side note, it is scary to notice that both Isi and I lost completely track of the weekdays. We only work in term of dates. We only knew that it is Sunday, because the local branch of the Department of Conservation (DOC) was closed today, said the internet ;)

Where was I, ah yes, weather and what to do. When we booked our final accomodations, the forecast promised only one thing for the entire North Island, rain. This has by now changed slightly. Today was supposed to be rainy in the afternoon, so we chose this morning to go and see Hobbiton. The movie set has been re-built for the filming of the film "The Hobbit" and this time it is supposed to be a permanent built.

Going there as a fan of the Lord of the Rings films was a little surreal, because it was, surprise, surprise, "just like in the film"! Sure it is all an artificially maintained little green oasis, but the attention to detail was beautiful to look at and you could see that the makers seemed to really care about it. There are still three gardeners full-time employed to tend to everything in there.

It was our guide's second day and she didn't seem to be that big of a fan of the books and films (unlike for example the guy on the Safari of the Scenes), so question about weird little details were left unanswered, but she guided through the tour expertly and had some interesting insights about the filming process (The tree above Bag End is pretty much all fake, for example).

Isi and I had the most fun trying to immerse us in the set. So we took pics of us in front of Hobbit holes, looking out of windows or while having a beer at the Green Dragon (Hobbiton's pub - Isi found out that it can even be rented out for weddings or birthday parties). We both left deeply impressed by the place. We knew that there was a lot of effort put into making the Lord of the Rings movies (and also the ones for the Hobbit, of course), but seeing the effort put into making Hobbiton come alive alone gave me a new appreciation of their work... and I still dislike the book, though ;)

One thing I was, however, slightly disappointed in, was the shop. The selection of stuff was poor. I mean, I expected so much useless, but kinda cool stuff. It would also be the perfect way of selling it, since most people would be more willing to buy the merchandise after seeing Hobbiton. I know I was willing to spend a couple of dollars. To top it all off, the T-shirts I wanted to buy, were not available in my size anymore :( ...

At the end of it we drove back to our motel to relax a bit more and plan out our final couple of days here in New Zealand. Looks like tomorrow will be Roturoa for some Maori culture, and the other days seem to hold several really cool things in store for us, as well. You'll see :)

During the discussion about it, I briefly went outside for something I can't even remember to be honest and I noticed a praying mantis right at our doorstep! We've never seen one before in real life, so we took some pictures and watched it for a little while, the way it walks. Wonders at your feet, eh? Very, very cool! Incidentally, these photos filled our first memory card on the camera entirely, which means we shot almost 2000 (!?!) photos until now. Let's see how many more will come...