Hobbiton

I'm finding it difficult to find time to post our adventures while on the road! More often than not, our internet connection is poor, and most of the time we don't have spare time!

The drive to Hobbiton from Whangamata was the most beautiful countryside I've ever seen. The rolling hills dotted with grazing sheep or cows, rock formations and hedges separating land is like England with a slight tropical twist. The windy roads are usually empty. They say there are more sheep than people in New Zealand. That seems to be true after several days of driving! I love it!

We saw a horizontal rainbow (we named it a "rainrod") that was impossible to capture through a rainy window, but it was absolutely magical.

The location for the Shire in the Hobbit movies was spotted from a helicopter. It has all of the elements of J.R.R. Tolkien's book. It was, and continues to be, an enormous sheep farm.

After Lord of the Rings was filmed, the shire was taken down. Later in preparation for the Hobbit, it took took two years to create the movie set, and all filming was done in twelve days! Afterward, the producer and sheep farmer started a business together, the producer owning the set, the farmer owning the land, and began tours. It is packed every day.

I'm going to share way too many pictures, but believe it or not, there are hundreds of charming and delightful details I'm not including! Oh, it was hard to look at it all hard enough!

Two pictures of the hobbit house below, because this is the one I would choose to live in...

Dozens of "extra" homes were built just in case the camera happened to catch one.

The gardens and paths were so imaginative. It transported us to an idyllic and mystical place, and we tried to figure out how we could live in such a setting!

Bilbo Baggins home!

The tour ended at the Green Dragon Inn where we all got a home-brewed ginger beer.

And the best sight of the whole day...

This was a pricey outing and we wondered if it would be worth it. It was worth every penny!