The Shire - Hobbiton, New Zealand

In the last week before they were leaving back to Norway, Marte, Kristian, Simon, and I rented a car and booked a tour of the Lord of the Rings, Hobbiton set.

First of all, before we get into the real story, you should know that since I am the only one in the group who is 25, I ended up being the driver. Now don't get me wrong, I love driving and I'm generally a pretty good driver, when I'm on the RIGHT side of the road!

My first experience driving manual in the right side of a car, on the left side of the road, at night in the city was... well... it wasn't exactly pretty. Shifting with the left hand, and signaling with the right, drifting too far to the left, not knowing exactly where I was going, or who had the right of way, and the roundabouts... ugh! It wasn't the most comfortable I've ever been in my life, let's just leave it at that. On the plus side, we all made it safe through my driving experience.

Now back to the Shire...

At first, I was a little bit turned off by the fact that you had to pay $66 for a guided tour, and that you couldn't just go on the set to take a few pictures yourself. I actually expected there to be just a few little hobbit holes here and there, and I heard from another friend who had gone earlier in the semester that it wasn't all THAT special. Nevertheless, I had to go for myself one way or another, especially since I had friends from home that were very VERY adamant on me going to the Shire.

When we got there, we had to park at the visitor center and boarded a bus that took us into the actual site of the set. As soon as the Shire was in view, I was shocked at just how much like the movie the set looked. Being a performing arts student, I was expecting that filming tricks made up a lot of the magic of the Shire, but it was really a magical place all on its own! I wanted to live there! It was soooo beautiful, I can only imagine how much more incredible the place must have looked during the summer when all the crops were in bloom, and with all the props.

Here's Pickles the resident cat of Hobbiton. She lives in the Shire full time and gets fed by all the workers. They keep her food in this hobbit hole.













At the end of the tour they fed some of the lambs (I like to call them baby sheep) with bottles of milk, and they even came up to you and ate grass from your hand. It was the cutest!

Here we are in front of Bilbo Baggins' house! This was our last trip together after spending the whole semester discovering New Zealand. I really love these guys and I miss them so much. I guess my next adventure with this group will have to be in Norway =P Until then, I've got another semester at Waikato, and more adventures in Aotearoa.