Day 2 in New Zealand: A Whole Day with the Hobbits

Want to know what an absolutely peak breakfast in New Zealand looks like? It looks like this!

That's a microwaved savory pie from the Newmarket grocery store, instant coffee, and some Whittaker's Hokey Pokey. Basically the same thing that I had for dinner the night before, but then I substituted Scrumpy for the coffee, ahem.

Now, onto Hobbiton!

In all of New Zealand, the prettiest thing I saw was sheep grazing on a hill:

Much of the North Island was clear-cut to make pastureland for them, and everywhere we drove, often on both sides of the road, there were hills full of sheep. Usually some would even picturesquely silhouette themselves on the hilltop for our special enjoyment. 

They don't photograph especially well, alas, at least not for me, but they were inevitably charming and delightful, and are my favorite thing about New Zealand.

This, though, is probably my partner's favorite thing about New Zealand, and for good reason:

I told you before that I wasn't real sure about the part where you can only visit Hobbiton via a guided tour, and I was less sure after seeing the size of the tour bus, and therefore tour group, we'd be with:

But actually it was awesome! The tour groups were far enough apart that I could take photos without anyone in the background, something that never would have been possible if we'd all been set free to wander at will:

So please pardon me, because I DO need you to see every single photo of every single lovely hobbit hole we visited:

Spring has to be the perfect time to visit Hobbiton. All the flowers were in bloom, so much so that you couldn't see some of the hobbit holes behind their owners' verdant blossoms. The weather also could not have been more perfect:

The entire place is set-designed to look like a busy hobbit village. It's a little disconcerting in that everything is left exactly as it would be if all the inhabitants had recently been Raptured--

--but, again, you can't say that it's not charming!

Our tour guide took this photo of the vista, including the adjacent farmlands--I imagine that getting to play with other people's cameras adds a little bit of fun to the process of taking forty tourist's photos in the doorway of the same hobbit hole five times a day:

There isn't actually an "inside" to these hobbit holes, but I love how all the smoking chimneys and busy windows set into the hillside make them look like there's a whole household inside every single one:

And of course, at the very top of the tallest hill is the most famous hobbit hole of all:

Every detail is book-perfect!

You can't really tell from my photos, but depending on where we were on the hillside, the hobbit holes were built to different sizes. Some are 100% human scale for the actors playing hobbits to interact with, some are 90% human scale, which I think is so the dwarves can look at little outsized(? Please correct me if I'm wrong, because I SUPER want to know!), and some are 60% human scale, which is for the actors playing humans to interact with, as the average hobbit is 60% the size of the average human. I think these next few hobbit holes are the 60% ones:

But you can't really tell from the photos, right, because regardless of the size, all the details are perfect!

Here's where Bilbo celebrated his eleventy-first birthday party. I, personally, wasn't really on the tour for its movie set-ness, but rather its book set-ness, but we still got lots of good gossip about what it was like to film the party scene here, including the secret ingredient to keeping small children party-wild over the course of an overnight film shoot: SUGAR!

And here we are making our way past the outskirts of Hobbiton and on towards the Green Dragon:

I don't really understand how they keep all these details looking so lovely out in the weather. The outdoor stuff looks appropriately worn, but little details like books left open on benches and newspapers inside mailboxes look perfect!

At the edge of town is a 90%-scale hobbit hole you can actually go inside, with book-accurate set dressing that makes it look exactly like the home of a busy, well-to-do hobbit family that just got Raptured.

Also, it turns out that I, too, am 90% scale, because I was perfectly comfortable here:

Lol at the emergency exit sign!

Now, time for a drink at the Green Dragon!

This view from the Green Dragon, across the pond and back towards Hobbiton, gives you a nice perspective of many of the hobbit holes, differently sized but still looking correctly proportioned to the viewer:

I don't know if you'd enjoy it if you didn't know the books, but I thought the whole place was absolutely enchanting.

DEVASTATED that this dish in the cafe was not named "Second Breakfast," however. Such a lost opportunity...


Pro tip for international travel destinations: if you want to encourage your most frugal travelers to buy souvenirs, get your airline that flies there to give them a free checked bag. I bought hardly anything in England last year, on account of we brought only carry-ons, but Air New Zealand gave us each a free checked bag, and so somehow this turned me into a cartoon version of myself, just absolutely tossing money at cashiers and filling my bag with chocolate bars and books and a Hobbiton hoodie and ciders and Jaffa cakes and yet more books. Don't tell the kids, but they're each getting an awesome illustrated copy of The Hobbit for Christmas! To be honest, I also really wanted a copy for myself, but presenting THREE identical copies of the exact same book to the cashier just felt like one copy too crazy, you know?

Even with eating lunch at the Shire's Rest Cafe and looking at every single thing in the gift shop twice, we had more time than we thought we would after Hobbiton. On the beautiful drive back to Auckland--

--my partner reminded me of the signs we'd seen at the Auckland waterfront the day before advertising a Lord of the Rings musical. Was it playing that night, he wondered?

It was!

Could we get tickets at the door, we wondered?

This was one of the best things we did in New Zealand. Y'all KNOW how I feel about musicals, and yet for whatever reason, I had no idea that this musical even existed! I don't know what the other productions might look like, but this Auckland production was chaotically, delightfully unhinged. The set looked sweet and homey--

--and at about 20 minutes until showtime I was just about to turn my phone off and put it away, when all of a sudden the cast came out in character and proceeded to go absolutely feral in the audience:

It was bonkers and hysterical, Gollum was like a circus creature but also weirdly hot(?), and by the time the show was over I was exhausted from joy.

The show itself wasn't the best musical production I've ever seen--there are serious pacing problems, most of the songs did nothing to forward the plot, a few parts were decidedly corny, and Galadriel gets way too much stage time--but it will absolutely remain one of the most fun musical productions I've ever seen.

Which actually does kind of make it one of the best!

As fun as it was, by the time the show was over I was about ready to lie down on the sidewalk and die, I was so tired, so before we left our downtown parking spot my partner parked me inside the rental car and ran across the road and got us Domino's, of all things. Thank goodness our hotel parking wasn't the nightmarish hellscape it was the previous night, so 20 minutes later I was in my pajamas eating pizza and Scrumpy in bed and staring befuddled-like at rugby on the TV.

Forty minutes later, I was sound asleep!

Tomorrow, I see the BEST thing in all of New Zealand: my daughter!

Here's the rest of our trip!

Day 1: Auckland

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, encounters with Chainsaw Helicopters, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!