This morning we “helped” feed the sheep and move the cattle. Then, it was off to one of the highlights of our New Zealand trip: Hobbiton!
Neither Karel nor I are the type to go on a pilgrimage to set locations and movie star houses, with this one exception. Hobbiton is a place I’ve wanted to visit ever since I saw the first film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. This was partly because the scenes, and Bilbo’s house, were a perfect match for what I imagined when I read the books (except for the tree above Bilbo’s house, but more on that in a minute). More importantly, Tolkien’s ideal of a world at peace, and the people who inhabit it, is the one utopia that resonates with me. If there is a heaven, it looks like Hobbiton, and I just had to go see it.