To the Shire!

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.  Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, yet not a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.  It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle."
                                              - The Hobbit or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien

JRR Tolkien's books were a big part of my childhood.  My family would get together every night and read aloud the books starting with The Hobbit and ending with the Return of the King.  They were the perfect books for a child's imagination.  My brothers and I couldn't get enough of the adventurous world Tolkien created.  Of course, it was exciting to see that world come to life in the movies when they came out years later.  Usually, I don't like when movies come out after I have read a book because things never look the same in the movies as they do in the imagination.  You spend so much time painting pictures in your head using the colors of the words you read, only to see it in real life completely different.  I have to say, Hobbiton is one scene painted by Tolkien that is just as magical in real life as it was in my imagination.  I was worried I would be disappointed by the movie set, assuming it would look like a movie set and take away the feeling you get when you read his books or see the movie.  I was wrong.  Walking through the Shire only makes you wonder where all the hobbits are hiding. The hand painted detail, the bright colors, the fresh vegetable gardens, and the real herbs and flowers growing in the hobbit hole yards put you right in the center of Middle Earth.   Hobbiton really does exist and New Zealand is the perfect setting for such an adventurous story.

This is what it actually looks like on the inside,
not very comfortable

The stools that Bilbo stood on to give his 111th Birthday Speech

The oak tree on top of Bag End is actually fake!  

This is the party tree.  This tree is real.

Real Vegetable Gardens

Bag End is the biggest hobbit-hole in all of Hobbiton

New Hobbit holes built for 'An Unexpected Journey'

The NZ Army was called in to make this bridge in classic double arched NZ Army style

A dramatic clash between the fantastical and the real

Left: Green Dragon Pub, Middle: Hay shed, Right: Water Mill

About a month after we got to New Zealand, I decided to buy The Hobbit on my Nook.  I haven't read the book that started a long family tradition and my love for reading in YEARS.  Of course I had to read the book while I was in a country that contains most of the epic scenery described by Tolkien.  We only brought the one Nook thinking Eddie and I would be able to share.  Negative.  We both wanted to read during the down times, because we were both bored.  We decided to take turns reading the book aloud to each other which made the experience that much better.  Our time reading the Hobbit was no less magical than the first time I heard the story as a young kid.  We came on this trip to have an adventure and it was only fitting to read a tale of one of the most grand adventures of all time!

"This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected."

                                -The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien