We had a tour arranged through our travel agent. We had received a email from the tour company, Flexi Tours, moving the start date up and setting the tour pickup at the M Social Hotel just off the end of the Princess Pier where we had docked. We arrived at the pick up point early and found two other couples, Tim and Cindy, Steve and Lynn, from our ship there who were on the same tour. We all waited until 15 minutes after our pick up time before starting to call the tour company to find out where our guide was. It seems they had forgotten about us, and they began to scramble to find a driver. Our driver, Dirk, got pulled in on his day off, to rush down and pick us up. He arrived 2.5 hours late, then had to stop to pick up another couple at another hotel, who were no longer waiting. After further delays, we found then and headed for the Hobbiton Movie set to see “The Shire” from the Lord of the Rings movies. The drive to the movie set was 2.5 hours with traffic. We arrived with a few minutes to grab some lunch at the cafeteria and rush through the gift shop before our tour time. The Hobbiton that exists now is not the original. The original was torn down and turned back into pastureland after they completed filming the three movies. When they went to film “The Hobbit”, they had to rebuild the set, but this time it was built to remain as a tourist attraction. From the parking area, we were taken by bus to the movie set and then given a guided tour of the set by Rob. There are 44 Hobbit Homes in the set, but they are mostly facades with nothing behind the door and window. But they recently just finished building two hobbit homes with full interiors with the help of Paramount Pictures. The sets look just like they do in the movies and we expected hobbits to come walking out at any instant! Bilbo Baggins house was not one of the houses finished out, it is purely a façade. Our tour lasted two hours ending up at the Green Dragon (number 2, the first version was burned down for the movie) for an ale before our driver rushed us back to our bus for the 2 hour drive back to the ship. We arrived back at the ship with just a few minutes to spare and headed straight to Martinis for an aperitif before heading the Terrace for dinner before they closed. It has been a long day but we certainly enjoyed Hobbiton even if we were a little rushed.
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