The afternoon of January 3 was spent outside a little town called Matamata at Hobbiton, so it called for its own blog post. We took A LOT of pictures and was completely separate from Rotorua. So here it is all you Lord of the Rings fans!
I guess it's lucky that we are over here now after the Hobbit films have been made because the sets of Hobbiton were completely removed after LOTR finished filming. You could visit the location before, but it didn't have the hobbit holes until now. Good timing for us!
In this first picture, we are at the place where we hopped onto our tour bus. We are overlooking the farm land that was used as the shire. Our tour guide informed us that the mountains in the far background were the Misty Mountains. When the locals saw them in the movie, this is how they found out this was where the shire filming had been located.
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| Look! I got the date updated on Mom & Dad's camera for them haha. |
Here we are at the entrance to Hobbiton! No one else wanted a picture with the sign so here I am by myself. This is also introduces us to the first tragedy of the afternoon - a fair breeze rolled in and kicked up Brian's hay fever like no tomorrow. He was pretty miserable the whole tour :(
As we walked through the gates we were treated to a spectacular view of Hobbiton as evidenced by the following two pictures! In the first below, can you see Bag End at the top left with the tree above it? I couldn't wait to get up there and take a closer look at that famous green door.
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| These pictures could practically pass for postcards! It was a gorgeous day. |
Each hobbit house was different. The set makers did a wonderful job of making each house unique as well as lived in.
And here is where the second tragedy entered in. I accidentally left the power to the camera on when we left Rotorua, so my battery died! Noooooo - we weren't even at Bag End yet. I was devastated. From this point on, we were left with Mom & Dad's camera.
Which leads into the third (and hopefully temporary) tragedy. Unbeknownst to us, the camera began using the internal memory rather than the SD card to take pictures. When that quickly became full, we thought the whole SD card was full. Chaos ensued as we tried to erase pictures I had already downloaded onto my computer to no avail. Once we figured out the problem, I got it switched to the SD card and we took pictures. However, I was unable to download the pictures from the camera directly because we didn't have the software and the online downloads did not support a Mac. Talk about lame.
So to wrap up that rather long story, there will be no up close and personal pictures of Bilbo & Frodo Baggins' house until Lisa can download the pictures and send them to me. Do it quickly Lisa!!!
So we will pick up the tour outside of Samwise Gamgee's home. You will recognize it from the end of the Return of the King when Sam comes back home after saying goodbye to Frodo.
Looking at the town square from the view of the hobbit houses. This is where you will find the Green Dragon Inn...which we will enter in just a little bit!
Mom really liked this bridge so I thought I better put it into the blog.
Mom and Dad are sitting on the bridge that Gandolf crosses at the beginning of the Fellowship of the Rings (when Frodo meets him and tells him he is late). Anyone know Gandolf's response? I did when the tour guide asked! The mill is in the background.
One last (and closer) look at the beautiful rolling hills of the "shire" and the misty mountains behind it.
And just in case you are worried, I will update this post once I have the rest of the pictures!!!
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