Last day in New Zealand

We spent our last full day in New Zealand at Hobbiton, AKA the set where the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies were filmed. Despite never having seen the movies (does falling asleep during the first Lord of the Rings count?), I figured we had to check it out since it was recommended in all of our tourist books.




Upon entering, I instantly fell in love with the area where the hobbits live! I just couldn't get over how cute it was, the amount of work it took to create, or the attention to detail! For example, some of the trees are fake, and apparently it took months just to add all of the fake leaves to them. If the trees even saw film time (a lot of them ended up on the cutting room floor), it was maybe for two seconds.



After the tour, which actually made me want to watch the films, we went to the Green Dragon Inn, where we had drinks. The Green Dragon Inn was absolutely charming! It was decorated in the same old-timey way as the Hobbit holes, and it featured multiple fireplaces. It was the epitome of cozy (as the cat below is so adorably demonstrating). Since the Green Dragon Inn is available for rent, I immediately envisioned having a wedding or prom there. Not that I would attend the prom in my thirties as I'm not quite that creepy (close though).




We drove back to Auckland after Hobbiton. Keith found a comedy open mic, so we decided to head there. It was very much like an American open mic: majority comics and in the back room of a bar that didn't seem to care too much about it. In fact, we later found out, this was the open mic's last night because the bar was cancelling it.

The MC, Scott Long, was hilarious, and he even agreed to let Keith go up at the last minute. Keith killed it, although he mistakenly called Hobbiton "Hobbitville," for which Scott hilariously took him to task. "You, sir, did not have the gall to come to our country and call it Hobbitville. It's HobbitTON! And that's our capital!"

All of the comics were so kind and welcoming (and funny, too!). It was interesting to see which topics were universal amongst comics: self-loathing and being lazy seemed to rank pretty high.

Keith on stage.

We left smiling as we had both been having some comedy withdrawals while we were gone. We headed back to our airport hotel, where we completed our nightly ritual of watching Snapped (because, honestly, if watching people go off the deep-end and become deranged murderers won't put you to sleep, then nothing will).

Tomorrow, we head home.