Traveling to Rotorua and visiting Hobbiton

As I am writing this post, it is POURING rain outside. It is likely to blow over and clear up - that was our experience in Auckland- but we will see. I think that this is unusual weather this time of year here but it does remind us of home :-)

Yesterday (Tuesday), we took the bus from Auckland to Rotorua as renting a car in one city and driving it to another is very cost prohibitive…you have to pay for someone to return it. Also, we thought it might be easier to drive on the left hand side of the road and the right hand side of the car for the first time outside of the city. The bus ride was about four hours and quite comfortable. We watched the rolling green hills pass us by and there were lots of cows, but very few sheep which surprised us. There are also many small hills or outcroppings that were apparently created by earthquakes. It is a very beautiful landscape.

We stopped for lunch and the offerings were very lackluster, though this bar that we found is amazing!

We arrived at this really cute bus station in Rotorua and called an Uber to take us to the car rental place. We are still getting used to driving on the opposite side of the road, and it is a team effort.

Rotorua is a sprawling city that has a TON of tourist activists that include lots of geothermal springs and geysers. It is nicknamed RotoVegas, I think because it is so touristy. We are staying in a lovely Airbnb in the burbs. It is walkable to the grocery stores and a few restaurants, but you really need a car to get around here and so George is getting lots of practice!

Hobbiton is amazing!!!! I am such a huge fan of Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings franchise and so this was definitely a bucket list trip for me. George also really enjoyed it, even though he is not as enamored with the lore. I HIGHLY recommend this experience if you travel to NZ. It was about an hour drive from where we are staying, in the town of Matamata. It is on a working sheep and cattle farm and so we finally saw lots of sheep! The original set from the LOTR was torn down and then this was rebuilt for the Hobbit trilogy. Then, the people who owned the land said, let’s make this a permanent attraction - so great and super lucrative for them as there are about 2000 people going through every day! There are people from all over the world there and so there is helpful signage in the bathroom

Our tour guide was great and we learned lots of fun facts about the filming of the movies. The Hobbit homes are all built to different scales, depending on how they were shot in the movies and which actors were performing in front of them. The level of detail is crazy! The tree above Bilbo’s house is not real and Jackson brought in student artists to create/ paint the leaves - a painstaking process - that they received credit for in the film, but no money. You learn a lot of fun facts on the tour AND they have created two Hobbit holes that you can tour. The details are AMAZING! They hired the same people who designed the sets to create these dwellings. You could honestly look around for hours and not see everything.

We finished our tour with a beer at the Green Dragon Inn and then a buffet lunch. I had the stout, which you can only have on the tour. They used to sell them, but they were exploding on planes when people took them home, so now you can only have it on the tour. I highly recommend it, though the Amber Ale that George had was good too! This Green Dragon Inn was not used in the filming, but was built for the tour. The facade that they built initially was spectacularly burned down when Frodo sees what may become of the Shire. Apparently the fire department was on hand and participated in the scene as the Orcs. The lunch is an additional purchase and it was well worth it. It is a buffet and had all kinds of food - very delicious and they cater to all dietary needs.

Our actual last stop was in the gift shop where we purchased and mailed postcards to the kids.

Here are some of the other pictures we took on this amazing tour!

This is the fake tree above Bilbo’s home

These steps leading up to Bilbo’s house are the only remaining original feature from the first movie as everything was removed and the sheep took over.

Here is the Party tree which the owners were going to have cut down, but when the person showed up to do it, he didn’t have a blade big enough - so lucky because the movie scouts found this and met with the family before he could come back with a larger blade.

We found the sheep on the way home!