Sommerfelds' European Vacation: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Set Tours

Finally Luke got his post done so I can get this posted.
We’ve been a bit slack in the last few days when it came to actually writing for this blog, but we’ve had a few pub nights filled with cards and music and exploration. I believe that blogging under the influence is an offence here in London, so we thought better of it.

We’ve missed so much, from the incredibly old and quirky Camden Markets, through to our trip down to the West End. The exploration of the East End, as well, was just as fantastic as it looked in luke’s previous piece, as was the ultra-touristy, but no less fantastic, Harry Potter set tour.

But let’s start with the Camden Markets. Coming out of the Tube in Camden Town on last Saturday morning was particularly confronting. Having just finally gotten the hang of the tube, which I should say is fantastic, we were bombarded with incredibly kitsch storefronts filled with such absolute shit it rivalled our trip to Oxford Street. This was rather disappointing from the get go, as we were promised a fantastic place filled with designer stores and vintage clothes shops. We made our way through the bustling menagerie of hastily erected street stores and poorly constructed shirt emporiums, desperately looking for a path out. Luckily, we quickly found it.

Making our way towards the north, we found the haven we had been hoping for. The Camden Stables were a wondrous and rather mystifying joy. The huge stables, abandoned decades ago, had had extension after extension built onto them, making for a labyrinthine jumbly mess of corridors and loops. Here there were stores selling exotic foods, right next to incredibly old vintage storefronts, who were directly adjacent to designer Japanese labels. The esoteric mix was amazing, and kept my interest piqued for the better part of the day. The family parted ways to explore the consumer jungle.

After spending a fairly exorbitant amount of cash on bags and clothes, we all met back up at the stable bar, which was located above the rest of the market. The bar was made up of one main hall where live acts played all day, as well as a series of rooms which were converted old horse mess-outs. It was fantastic, and the music that wafted throughout the entirety of the place was of a consistently high quality.

Two acts really wowed me that day, one being the acoustic act David 9, who had a really odd mix of old school rhythm and blues with some more poppy hits that really stuck in my hea for the entire week. His set was a good half hour, but interestingly he only played 4 songs or so. Even more interestingly is that, even when a song was 10 minutes long on one riff, they were still incredibly engaging, with his tongue-in-cheek preaching about different experiences he has had.

The second act was probably one of the most incredible three piece rock outfits I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing. The Din are a group of incredibly talented musicians, making incredible songs. Epic doesn’t begin to describe their sound, which fuses tones familiar from many indie acts with flamenco and jazz influences while somehow overshooting the understated riffs and musings of those genres to instead go full bore for new age epic rock. Fantastic live performances from all three, and the harmonies they shared were mesmerising. Check them out.

We called it a day after that. We saw Jersey Boys on mothers birthday, as she wrote about below. In fact, most of everything has been written about except for the one topic many of my friends were most jealous of.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Set Tours.

The Harry Potter set tour was utterly fantastic, despite the lengthy uncomfortable bus ride it took to get to the sets themselves. They take you into a little cinema to start off with, where, disappointingly, there is a wankish presentation where a group of producers circle jerk each other and congratulate themselves on being so ingenious as to make a set of movies on one of the greatest childrens series of all time. But this is short-lived.

After that the cast welcomes you in a charming, if not a bit kitsch, presentation about how it all went down, and about how these sets were their lives for a great many years. It’s interesting to hear their perspective, but it’s nothing you have not heard in an interview previous. The interesting part was at the end of the presentation, the screen drops and the doors into the main hall are directly in front of you. Ok, that was cool.