London: A Day of Magic and Music

It's the Big day today! Today is what we're here for.

First we visited the Warner Bros Harry Potter Studios near Watford.
We had an early breakfast and then went on the Underground and the west Midlands train to Watford Junction. From there a shuttle bus picked us up and drove us to the studios. We had tickets for 11 am and around 10.40 we arrived at the scene. Hardly a queue so we were in within minutes. From that moment on things became magical. We arrived at the real Hogwarts, the real Gringotts Bank and lots of other scenes for the Harry Potter movies. Amazing! I never thought I would enjoy this so much. Seeing Bas enjoying all of this, being a huge Potter-fan (he knows ev-er-y-thing about the books and background of the characters), was extra great. This trip is quite the opposite of the things he had to go through the last time he was in London. Mission accomplished, although we're not talking about that at all.  (I did check his shoe laces though, the first time we went on the Underground escalators) Enough. It's magic now!

Halfway the tour we had lunch and of course Bas, Daan and Peter ordered butter beer. After lunch we went for the 2nd part.
Around 15.00 hours (4 hours in total!) we took the shuttle buys back to Watford Junction and from there on the train to London Euston.

A quick stop at the hotel  to freshen up for the next event o f the day: ABBA Voyage. We're going to the concert at the ABBA Arena at Pudding Mill Lane. The tube and DLR took us from Paddington via Canary Wharf to the arena where we arrived just after 18:00. Dinner first. We all had a burger with fries.

The doors opened at 18:30 and by the time it was 19:00 we stepped into the arena. Block C, perfect seats with a perfect view at the stage.
At 19:45 sharp all the lights went out and Agnetha, Frida, Benny and Bjorn came on stage. What????? What’s happening?? Amazing! They appeared as rising silhouets at first, so I thought "aha, it's just a projection", but then the lights went on and they started to walk around. Whaaatttt???? I couldn't figure out how, so I deciced to stop thinking about that and just enjoy the show. And what a show it was! Fantastic! Lights, huge screens, a live band and ABBA at the center stage, perfect sound. Wow wow wow. Truly amazing.
The show went on for 90 minutes. It was all over way too soon.

Afterwards Joke and I (as the elder part of our family-group) were in sort of a shock for a while. It took us some time to process it all. I've never seen such a thing before.
Unfortunately, but understandably, it wasn't allowed to take pictures during the show. So todays photo comes from the ABBA Voyage site. In the extra section is a selfmade Potter picture.

We arrived back at the hotel all exhausted from this perfect day. Good night and thank you for the music!!