We went to Hobbiton. It was small. It was kind of hard to imagine Gandalf driving a cart on some of these pathways. But hey, who cares? We were in HOBBITON. 
So, we started off our adventure in the exact same place as when Frodo first meets Gandalf in the Fellowship of the ring. It was about 3 feet wide. How they managed to get a cart through there, I’ll never know. Anyhow we walked through there and we got this picturesque view of the shire. It wasn’t very big. In total there were about 43 houses and each and every one only went about a meter into the hillside. With exception of Bilbo’s house, which went about 5 meters into the hillside. Now, I know you all must be asking how they filmed the scenes inside the house. Well, they filmed all of the outdoor scenes in hobbiton and all of the indoor scenes in an indoor studio down in wellington. The only reason Bilbo’s house went deeper into the hillside and was actually furnished was because they had to make sure that, when Bilbo opened and closed the door in the outdoor scenes, all the audience saw was a furnished house. Pretty clever. So we looked at all of the of the hobbit doors and yards. There were two types of houses, some of them which a 60% human size and some which were a 90% human size. The reason for this was to make the hobbits look small(on a 90%) and Gandalf to look big(on a 60%). I discovered that all of the trees were real, but the fruit was not. Why, I dunno, that’s just how they did it.
Cool flowers
A bit more of the picturesque scenery
Moving on.
We ended up finishing our journey at the Green Dragon (how do I do a trademark?), were we all got drunk and slept for the rest of the day. Sike, it didn’t go like that. I drank good ginger beer (for once)
and sat and listened to people talk. Then we went to the gift shop for a bit and then we went back home.
A year of discovery 