A Blessing!

One of my favorite parts of traveling is seeing how things will just work themselves out. And no matter how hard you try to plan, I love seeing how tender mercies come in the strangest ways.

Our plan for that day was to go to Hobbiton, take the tour of The Shire, and then be in Hamilton to catch the last Endowment Session at the Hamilton LDS Temple at 4:30 pm.

However, when we got to Hobbiton, we didn’t realize that tickets were best purchased in advance, so the next available tickets that day were at 2:30 pm. The tour is 2 hours long, so there was no way we could make it to the Temple.

We weren’t quite sure what to do. We thought about leaving and coming back on Monday, but the weather was not looking too great. As we were discussing our options, a lady came out to us and said, I can help you at the next register. We decided to just get in line anyway. When we got to the front, she asked us how many tickets we needed. We told her 5, and she said, “Ok, I have a tour at 12:30.” We were shocked! That was in 20 minutes and taking that tour would allow us enough time to get to the Temple.

We weren’t quite sure how there suddenly was tickets available for an earlier time, we were ever grateful. Totally a tender mercy!

Lesson learned: Things Will Work Out!

Ok, so Brandon is a huge Lord of the Rings fan, and although I’ve seen them all through once, I’m not a die-hard fan. We planned on watching them all before we left on our trip, but that never happened. Oops!

But Hobbiton. I tell you what. It made me want to watch all the movies again and honestly, made me want to jump into this fairy-tale land and stay forever.

The tour was a few hours long. And even though we were in a tour, there was plenty of down-time to take photos. I loved learning more about how they found the location, and all they did to create the magical Shire.

So, here’s a photo dump!

Waiting for our tour to start

View from Bag End

^Someone was a bit tired from all the walking.

^Just their size!

^We got to try Ginger Beer (non-alcoholic, of course) at the end of the tour. And Brandon splurged and bought us some meat pies to try. They were tasty!

^All the details were just perfect. And those mini clothes on the line. So cute!

^Me: “Oliver,  cheese!”