Lacock

We're finally coming to the end of my vacation posts. I'd feel bad about posting so many, except my life in January is really not all that exciting. Going over my vacation in excruciating detail is still more exciting than hearing about my new vacuum or how I organized my receipt drawer. 

One sunny (!) day, we got our kids to come along with us on a visit to Lacock. Doesn't Anya look excited to be along? 

Lacock is a type of outing that Mike and I love, that generally our kids have no interest in: cute, old town, beautiful scenery, historic buildings to visit. Except that Lacock has a movie tie-in that made it fun for the kids - some of the Harry Potter movies were filmed here. I didn't even tell them that Lacock was also used as Meryton in Pride and Prejudice. They're a little disdainful of my P&P obsession, so no need to turn them off.

I seem to have a rather large proportion of our outings planned around movie or book locations. I justify it by: one, it sometimes gets the kids interested in places they'd normally not be interested in, and two, movie location scouts generally pick places that are beautiful, well-preserved and representative of a certain era.  They're great places to visit that we might not have known about without the movie tie-in.

We saw the house used for Slughorn's temporary residence, but didn't take a picture. This is just another random, cute street.

Lacock is a compact little village. It's very easy to walk through the whole thing, even for people who might avoid walking in general.

I'm pretty sure this is where the scenes were shot of people arriving to the Meryton assembly. If only the people of Lacock would ban all cars, then we could get the full effect. 

I took this over-exposed picture of this house just because I thought it was cute. We later learned that it was used as Harry Potter's family home in the first two movies. 

Lacock has an abbey that is beautiful on its own and also was used for some of the school scenes in the first two Harry Potter movies.

Here's Mike! He doesn't get shown much as he's a better photographer than I am. 

Can't you picture a group of Hogwarts' students passing by at any moment?

This room was used as a classroom in the films. 

This cloisters was used for some of the school outdoor/courtyard scenes.

The grounds of Lacock Abbey are beautiful. What I saw of them anyway. By that time we were ready to eat.

One nice thing about visiting English Heritage or National Trust sites is that you can always count on them having a tea room for a nice snack. 

Although the kids joined us this day, you might have noticed they weren't involved with a number of our outings. They got new books and electronics for Christmas, so they enjoyed entertaining themselves at our rental for most of the time. Happily, our rental came with access to a swimming pool, so when we'd get back they had fun playing around in the pool. Mike and I got to do what we wanted and enjoyed not dragging unhappy children on outings, so we managed a vacation where everyone was happy!