(Gabi) Today was clearly one of the highlights of our entire trip. We were about to visit Warner Brothers for a proper 2 hour studio tour. This was quite different from the Universal tour because this is no theme park, just a proper working studio and the tours are a little extra they offer on the side. People are hard at work here for shows like the Big Bang Theory. And the Gilmore Girls revival just finished filming here. This was terribly important to us because Gilmore Girls is our favorite tv show. We even played the theme song at our wedding ceremony. So visiting these sets and studios was an immense treat for us.

The Warner Brothers water tower is no longer in use but still very iconic.

We boarded a big golf buggy with about 8 other people and a lovely guide and dove right in. He took us around the backlot first. Here is the New York City Street set where they filmed the famous upside-down kiss in Spiderman.

Soon after, we entered the Gilmore Girls set (to represent a fictional town called Stars Hollow). This set is called Midtown USA and is used for other shows like Pretty Little Liars. Here we see the entrance of Stars Hollow High School (or whichever other school it needs to be). They used the same set for Rebel without a Cause with James Dean and there the same building was used as the entrance of a courthouse.

Luke’s Diner, now ‘dressed’ (painted and decorated) for Pretty Little Liars. They just repaint, redecorate and even rebuild the building fronts to suit their needs. They’re nothing but plastic on a wooden frame and endlessly customizable.

This strip of grass is Central Park from Friends. I kid you not. And Yale from Gilmore Girls (with Rory’s study tree). Just a tiny patch of grass with a handful of trees and some bushes. Can you say movie magic?

This is Chicago from ER. Yup. With the hospital entrance.

And then we got to go into the Big Bang Theory sound stage and boy was that exciting!! It’s essentially nothing more than a well-insulated hall with 3 sided cubes that contain the sets. Just right next to each other. So you have Leonard’s bedroom, the stairwell with the broken elevator and Leonard and Sheldon’s living room right next to each other. If they need the comic book store, they just build it in a cube they’re not using for that shoot. All the sets face a huge wall of seats for the studio audience. Big Bang Theory is always recorded in front of an audience so they can record the laugh track. And make changes if the audience doesn’t react as expected. They actually go into the audience and ask what could be improved during filming. Handy to have a test audience right there on set. Shooting one 30 minute episode can take up to 5 hours with many repeated takes. So they keep the viewers happy with snacks.

Thomie got to run up and down the Big Bang stairs which was probably one of the highlights of our whole trip. As you can imagine, those stairs don’t lead anywhere. And they just change the flat numbers and a couple of accessories to make it look like different floors.

Sheldon’s and Leonard’s living room set is behind a glass wall because people from the tours kept stealing props. A real shame because we would have loved to take a closer look.

WB also has an archive with Harry Potter props and costumes. We had a little wander around the room and then got back on the tram.

Next Josh showed us WB’s huge workshops, where carpenters and other craftspeople build and assemble sets. There’s also a cool workshop where they mould big plastic pieces like statues. This really drove home the point that most of what we see in movies (including buildings and landscaping) is made out of plastic and wood. And it reminded me of how much hard work and craftsmanship goes into every single scene of a movie or a show. Movie making isn’t all glitz and glamour.

There was a cool Batman exhibit with loads of Batmobiles. Without a doubt some of the coolest cars in the history of movie making.

Thomie holding a real Oscar from the 40s (best animation short, I think). Apparently, it really is heavier than you’d expect. And this old Oscar was even lighter than today’s Awards because they used cheaper materials, back then.

Just as in the Harry Potter studios in London (where movies were filmed) they had some green screen photo opportunities. However, the prices felt like a bit of a rip-off, so we didn’t bother.

Of course you exit through a gift shop. They sell a lot of Big Bang Theory, Friends and Harry Potter merch. But we were more exited about being able to score two Gilmore Girls t-shirts.

Lunch was a hot dog and a corn dog at the awesome Dog Haus. A funky little restaurant with the most attentive staff and an insane hot dog and sausage menu. Thomie’s dog came with cheese, onions and loads of jalapenos. You could get any of their sausages dipped in corn bread batter and fried, so I went for a corn dog with a spicy thai sausage. A wonderful flavor explosion which went really went well with my side order of sweet potato fries.

Thomie and I really really wanted to take a good photo with the Hollywood sign, but this turned out o be impossible. The Griffith Observatory was the closest we got to the sign but it just doesn’t show up in photos. It’s there behind us, just below the broadcast tower you can see in the distance. I’m sure it would have turned out better with a proper camera. You can get closer to the sign, in theory and I have the address of a perfect photo location. But the residents up there despise tourists and I didn’t feel like upsetting them.

In Griffith park we drove past one of the Back to the Future filming locations (where Marty starts the DeLorean for his trip back to the 80s) and Thomie couldn’t resist taking a first photo.

To finish the day, we went to a lovely mall in Glendale where we chanced upon this amazing candy store. I couldn’t resist getting a little bag of pick and mix sweets.