Hobbiton Movie Set

On our third day in New Zealand, we visited the Hobbiton movie set. It was really awesome to see all of the places I recognized from the movies. The Shire was kept very well maintained so the farm owners could profit off of the movie set. It was really cool to see how the director, Peter Jackson brought his artistic vision to life. His whole deal was that he had to have everything in the movie be exact and true to the book. However, in a lot of situations this was impractical so he had to do some impractical things. Because some trees were not the right species, he shipped in huge quantities of artificial leaves to tie onto the old trees. He also had interns hand paint leaves by the thousands to be just the right shade of green. He was certainly a perfectionist.
One really cool part of the visit was seeing the inside of a hobbit hole. There was real plumbing and it was very cozy inside. It was cool to see. We also got to eat a hobbit feast at the Green Dragon inn, which we learned Peter Jackson burned down twice for one scene. The feast was delicious. After we watched a baby chase around a duck for 20 minutes, which was one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. It was a good day.