Welcome to Hobbiton! Located near the city of Matamata, with a population of 7,000, this town sees mostly tourist types visiting the Lord of the Rings movie set. The set was not originally set aside to be used for tours, in fact much of it was destroyed after the first movies. However with an apparent interest in the set and then with the Hobbit movie being released the movie set has been revamped and will remain open to visitors!
The Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed all around New Zealand. Hobbiton is the home of the hobbits! It features the remaining hobbit holes and Bag-End. In addition when Frodo first set out on his journey and joined by the other hobbits, that cornfield is also here. The new movie, the Hobbit, will feature a lot more of this area. I cannot post pictures of the hobbit holes until the new movie is released, but if you are interested I can email and show pictures to you!
The set is located outside of Matamata, in a very beautiful region!
The Green Dragon and bridge. These were recently reconstructed. The Green Dragon will likely be opened up as a functioning pub to the public. It will be able to house almost 100 and will likely be used for weddings!
The tree in front of which Bilbo Baggins disappeared with the help of the Ring.
The Lord of the Rings movie set is on the grounds of a still operating sheep and dairy farm! In New Zealand there are an estimated 40 million sheep, about 10X the population of NZ!
And we got to bottle feed lambs!
Beautiful views in New Zealand! Driving around is a lot of the fun here!
Lake Karapiro. This is a popular spot for rowing and sailing competitions, which we were lucky enough to see!
The dam on the Waikato River. In addition to geothermal power, NZ also relies of hydraulic and coal burning power plants.
Hamilton Gardens! This complex features a number of exhibits with plants from all over the world. There is an Indian, Italian, American, Japanese and Chinese Garden. There were also smaller herb gardens and a Maori garden. The site is free to the public and seems to function as a type of local park where people come for the day in addition to seeing many tourists.
Chinese Garden!
One of the corridors, branching out into the Italian Garden.
This is the "American garden." Now despite the fact I half expected to see a burger-king, I still feel like we were underrepresented! We have more than pools, tanning chairs and a large painting of Marilyn Monroe. At least there was one scraggly maple tree. It was great because I traveled here with a van of people from all different countries and I got lots of teasing on behalf of this garden!
The Italian Garden. So beautiful!
The back entrance to the Italian Garden.
There was also a Maori themed Garden in the complex. These sculptures and architecture are fairly typical of Maori art we've seen throughout the North Island.
That's it for now!
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