Okay. Hobbiton is just plain adorable. The details are so lovingly maintained. Vegetables, fruit and herbs growing around perfect little hobbit hole entryways. Little laundry hanging on clotheslines. Firewood cut to perfect little hobbit size. And the ale at the Green Dragon Tavern was perfect. We felt like we were really in the shire.
Our tour group snapped about a million pictures. "Look! Another darling little hobbit hole! Take 20 more pictures!" The cutest was a little 5 or 6 year old dutch girl. She ran to each new hobbit hole and waited for her parents to take her picture. When I told her mother how cute she was, the mom replied, "She doesn't know anything about the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings. She just thinks a bunch of little people live here. And that they are all at work right now."
The trip to Hobbiton tops off a string of close encounters with Lord of the Rings. On Saturday we drove by the "Plains of Gorgoroth" on our way to do a 3 hour hike in the shadow of Mount Doom. And yesterday we watched the Aratiatia rapids flood and then ebb again where the great barrel escape in Hobbit 2 was filmed.
It's almost embarrassing to say how cool it feels to visit all these sites. Almost. Until you see how stunningly beautiful they all are. I mean, there's a lot of good material here in New Zealand. And Peter Jackson picked some of the best for his films.
Call me a dork. But I have loved all of it!
I am not a Lord of the Rings devotee but I did keep looking for the like button with each of the photos. What a wonderful adventure you are having!
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