Game of Thrones Tour

Connor and I spent the day in Northern Ireland visiting some of the filming locations for Game of Thrones and it was awesome!! The country is beautiful and we had so much fun! The tour group that we went with met at 8 this morning and took us by coach bus to Belfast and the surrounding areas. If anyone is planning a trip to Ireland, we definitely recommend this tour! There is a small amount of hiking, but it's really enjoyable and not very strenuous. To help get you in the mood, they gave us cloaks to wear and they were warm enough that I only wore a light sweater underneath! If anyone is interested, the website we booked through was http://www.gameofthronestours.com/ and if you are planning on doing the tour, you may want to stop reading this so that you get to experience it all without "spoilers"! If you haven't watched the whole show, almost the entire tour is filming locations from just the first season.

One of the main reasons we had such an amazing time was the great guide we had! Eric was really friendly and knowledgeable, but also offered a new perspective because he was an extra in season 5 and the upcoming season 6. His anecdotes were so interesting and funny and really made the tour special.

On the ride there, we watched a few scenes to get us into the mood as well as playing a round of trivia! We also watched some of the behind the scenes clips that showed how it was filmed and how some of the CGI worked, As someone whose"film making" knowledge is just setting my phone camera to video, this was so interesting. I had no idea the extent they went to to achieve these amazing shots. I definitely have a new appreciation for it. For example, the opening scene of the entire show is only about 2 minutes long, but it took them 10 weeks to prepare it. This was the first place we visited on our trip.

Before visiting each of the locations, we were shown stills from the show as well as a short clip on an iPad. If you want to see the clip, watch the first 3 minutes here, but for anyone who may not have watched before, just know it's a little graphic.

Doesn't Connor look spiffy?

walking into the haunted forest oooooo 

But actually this is Tollymore Forest Park which was the first state forest park in Northern Ireland

The tree where the "dead" girl was hanging

Wildling pit from where Will first sees it

Wildling pit from above

Part of our group gathered around the pit looking like come creepy cult or something! At least we weren't chanting

The next place we went to was where Jon and Tyrion talk in episode 2 on their way to the wall. You can watch the clip here

where the camp fire was

*swoon* my very own Jon Snow

Next we saw where the Starks found the Direwolf puppies! Definitely watch the clip here

On the bridge where they find the dead stag

The location is unbelievable! 

 This was it for spots in the forest, but it was so beautiful I had to take a few other pictures as well even if they weren't Game of Thrones related! The view coming in was also breathtaking, but I couldn't get a picture from the bus window. We drove past the Mountains of Morne, which was where CS Lewis got his inspiration for The Chronicles of Narnia so we had to drive through Narnia to get to Westeros!

Oh look! There's that group of weirdos again!

This is from on top of the bridge overlooking where they found the Direwolves

Connor's Gandalf-esque walking stick

After we left the forest, we drove a little bit further to this really quaint restaurant. We placed our orders ahead of time so by the time we arrived, they had a private room with a fire going for us all set up with our food all ready. The best part about this pit stop though was who we met while we were there! Eric, our tour guide, is friends with this family who calls themselves the "Game of Thrones family" because so many of them have been involved with the show from the beginning. The dad is a slave master with the Dothraki for 6 episodes in season 1, their son is wildling, and their cousin is something else that I can't remember. But the best family members of all are two of the dogs that play the direwolves!! We got to meet Odin who plays Grey Wind (Robb Stark's direwolf). He was so laid back and well trained! The father and son were both there and talked to us for a long time, answering all of our questions, telling us about their experience, and taking pictures.

The coolest this about this pub is that it's literally right down the road from where St. Patrick built his first church and where he died. With St. Patrick's Day just around the corner, it definitely put us in the mood!

Odin/ Grey Wind!!!

William keeps a scrapbook of all the scenes his family has been in, as well as pictures taken with the big stars of the show.

He said how happy he is that GoT has encouraged tourism in Northern Ireland

After lunch we headed for Winterfell!! In season one, they filmed at Castle Ward Estate, but now they've built a super secret set at an unknown location. Before we drove up, I was expecting this really huge, impressive fortress, but it's actually 10 times smaller than it seems in the show, since most of it is created through CGI. They filmed King Robert arriving in the North here and you can watch the clip

approaching Winterfell

In case you didn't know, coach buses are a common means of transportation in Westeros

where they filmed Bran climbing, they just CGIed the whole thing to make it look taller and without the windows!

where the brothel is located

After this, we had a short walk to the Twins, where we learned there aren't really any "twins" because one of the towers as well as the connecting bridge don't actually exist and that it's all CGI. The walk there was absolutely gorgeous! We also got really lucky because it wouldn't have been much fun walking through all that mud if it had rained!

This is actually Audley's Castle, which was built in the 15th century, but it is used as where the Freys live and where the Red Wedding is supposed to be set

We only visited one filming location from season 2, which was when Brienne has Jaime prisoner and they come across 3 dead tavern girls hanging from a tree. We went past where they docked their boat and the tree the girls were in. You can watch the clip here

The last place we went to was the ruins of a 12th century Abbey where Catelyn and Robb are delivered bad news and the Stark banner men declare him "King of the North" here is the clip. You can see the big windows in the back, but pretty much everything else is CGI since the original structure was destroyed by vikings hundreds of years ago. Instead, we used the location to dress up and play with swords, Jon and Brienne's swords to be exact!

Stark shield

The Hound's mask!

I'm really intimidating I swear!

In case you couldn't tell by the pictures, Connor and I had so much fun! It was a long day, but one of the best we've had in Europe so far!

Last Days in Amsterdam

I'm sorry it's been so long since we've posted! Unfortunately the time we can spend in Europe is coming to an end, but we're going out with a bang! We've been busy planning the rest of our adventure and where we want to travel, but have taken full advantage of our remaining time here in Amsterdam. We've had a blast visiting the different museums and exploring the city! Some places we took too many pictures and then others we didn't take any so bear with me!

We loved visiting the Royal Palace! In the 1650s it was built as a city hall, but when Napoleon Bonaparte came to power in 1805 he converted it to his own private royal palace.

Atlas holding up the world

The decorations throughout the whole palace were inspired by bible stories, Greek mythology and other legends

The original Citizen's Hall where hundreds of people would gather every day, On the floor, there are maps that show the regions explored by the Dutch East India Company's ships in the first half of the 17th century. It was interesting to see how they have changed since more of the world was discovered.

We also visited the National Maritime Museum, or Het Scheepvaartmuseum, which is located inside a former naval storehouse. Honestly, I was expecting a boring old museum with a few models and maybe a telescope or something, but I couldn't have been more wrong! They had extensive renovations a few years ago and reopened in 2011 and I was very impressed; they had a few floors of interesting and interactive exhibits and everything was very modern and beautiful.

In rooms with ship models, the walls had projections on them that looked like waves making it seem like the ships were actually floating and we were out at sea. They had another room that taught you how to navigate using the stars so the whole room was dark and the walls and ceiling lit up to form different constellations. They had a whole section dedicated to whales and huge models of what they look like that you could walk inside. They even had a "board game" for kids in which you were the pieces and you had to perform different tasks to advance around the "board" that went through the whole top floor. The Dutch have such an amazing history that is largely based on their impressive navy and sea-faring skills and this museum does a great job showing this.

Connor reading 400 year old maps

They have a large collection of figure heads that had been on the front of many ships

Down the street from us, there is the Tropenmuseum which has multiple exhibits displaying different cultures from all over the world. They had everything from artifacts from ancient Africa to an exhibit on life in the 1960s. We visited here on Valentine's Day so they had a section dedicated to romance as well as girls dressed up as hearts on giant stilts walking around handing out candy!

We also visited the Hermitage Museum, which is a branch museum of the Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg. They have two exhibits that rotate out every few months with ones in Russia, but when we visited, we saw Spanish Masters  and Portrait Gallery of the Golden Age. In the Spanish one, we saw some amazing paintings from El Greco, Velázquez, Goya, Picasso, and more. The Golden Age focused on Dutch artists during the 17th century.

Most of the museums that we've visited offer free audio tours so we weren't surprised when Hermitage did too. However, we were surprised when instead of information in each room while we explored the Spanish Masters, it played Spanish music that was specifically selected to match the tone of the art displayed. It was a surprising extra bonus that made looking at the works more enjoyable.

Connor with an organ donated to Hermitage

 We also went back to the Rijkmuseum since it's so big we couldn't see the whole thing! The Van Gogh museum is right next door so we visited there as well. The museum takes you on a tour of his life and how different aspects of it affected his art. It contains a hall dedicated to the many self portraits he's done. He was then drawn (no pun intended!) to rural peasant life and this inspired him to paint the Potato Eaters. He also was inspired by his time living in France and Japan. They also had paintings done by his contemporaries on display. My favorites were definitely Dutch tulip fields done by Monet!

"As for me I'll be a knight" -Ron Weasley

some of the...sillier pieces of art!

Potato Eaters (not my picture)

Tulip Field Near the Hague (not my picture)

There are a few other museums in that area as well that we enjoyed. One of which was a chess museum. Connor and I had been playing chess a lot, but we could only do it on the computer so we decided we wanted to buy an actual board. We googled where to find one and we came across the museum and decided to go check it out! It's dedicated to Max Euwe, the only Dutchman to ever become a chess grandmaster.

The museum was pretty difficult to find because it's located on the second floor of an office building, which was actually used as a prison during WWII. It is very small, old, and completely empty. There were no other visitors and the 70-something year old volunteer looked surprised to see us! But he was so enthusiastic and knowledgeable we stayed and chatted with him for over 2 hours and finally bought a board!

The giant chess board was outside and the whole square was chess themed with lights in the shapes of the different pieces

We also really enjoyed the Amsterdam Museum. The building was originally from the 15th century and used to be an orphanage, but was converted into a museum in 1926 and completely redone a few years ago. Throughout the entire museum the walls are used as a timeline of important worldwide events and how they affected Amsterdam including everything from Napoleon's conquests to the building of the Taj Mahal to George Washington becoming president. They also had videos in each room going into detail about what life was like during those periods of time in Amsterdam. They had a few rooms on current life in the city, with one section dedicated to young students to display art that best exemplifies what their lives are like right now.

Playing bartender in an old timey bar

 We've had a great time exploring the city! 

We came to Amsterdam looking to find jobs, but unfortunately were unsuccessful so we have to come home. We're sad to be packing up, but we will be exploring a few other countries before we head home on April 7!