July 22 – A Muggle Walking Tour of London

Today we have our Muggle Walking Tour of London, led by Alex “Scamander”.  (These tour guides take their last names from various Harry Potter characters.  Our guide is named after Newt Scamander, a character in HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban).  Anyway, he was quite good, often very dramatic and always full of HP information.

The tour started at Leadenhall Market, a covered market from which Diagon Alley is loosely based.  According to Google Leadenhall stands at the center of old Roman London and the market itself dates back to the 14^th century.  The cobblestones and roof date from the mid‑1800’s.  It is a lovely market with a few very, very old shops and some pretty new businesses.

From there we went to a nearby door that was the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron Pub that led to Diagon Valley. 

The walk took us through many narrow alleyways, by pubs that date back hundreds of years and old buildings where Charles Dickens lived or drank or wrote his books.  It was a fascinating walk through areas we have never visited before. 

We stopped by St. Paul’s Cathedral…

and had good views of some of the interesting new buildings in London.  We had great views of the Shard,

the Boomerang,

Tower Bridge,

and the Walkie Talkie.

The last item to be pointed out to us was a non-Harry Potter location…the Clink.  The Clink dates from 1144 and is the oldest prison in England (now a museum).  This is the origin of the phrase “getting thrown into the clink”.

Some other, random, non-Harry Potter related photos of London.

The walk was pretty long and we made it even longer by searching out the nearest Gourmet Burger Kitchen (which turned out not to be too near).  After that we headed to the local tube stop and headed back to the hotel.  It was great tour and a good day.