Sneaky Little Hobbitses

With our time in Auckland at an end, we gathered our many bags and made the journey from our hotel to pick up our rental car. A bus ride and a short walk (made longer with so much baggage) later, we collected our cute little red Corolla and we were off, our destination - Hobbiton.

First, we took a quick detour to Mount Eden, yet another of New Zealand's dormant volcanoes, to get a better view of the Auckland region.

Auckland City

And finally, our road trip began. Two hours later we arrived in Hobbiton and, in classic New Zealand style, our arrival party consisted of a few sheep.

Baa!

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so I'm going to let the photos do most of the talking.

As soon as you walk into Hobbiton, you feel like you've entered a real Hobbit village. I was secretly hoping there might be Hobbits hiding somewhere in the bushes. Unfortunately, there weren't but the attention to detail really makes the whole place feel alive.

I loved the veggie patch with the massive plants, but the best part was, of course, the Hobbit holes!

 

We started the day with beautiful blue skies, but as we walked through the village the sky quickly began to change to stormy grey.

 

Luckily the Green Dragon Inn wasn't too far away, so we quickly took a few more photos with some Hobbit holes and headed to the inn for some beer, cider and pie.

 

                          

I probably wouldn't recommend the cold pork pie (go for the warm beef pie instead), but the beer and cider were delicious.

Sadly, we had a road trip to finish so instead of finding a hiding place and staying in the village we made our way back to the car to finish our drive to Rotorua.

xx Kate-Lyn