When I visited Northern Ireland a few years ago, my friend and I drove to Downpatrick and stopped by the Gaol. As we were looking around, the door to the gift shop opened and the woman who had been behind the register when we came in poked her head out.

“See that blue tarp? It’s covering wood that was used when they filmed here last week! Sean Bean was here!” Whether or not she knew my friend and I were Lord of the Rings fans or not,  I’m sure our giddy reactions made her day because she was smiling when she ducked back inside. (Later I looked it up and it was The Frankenstein Chronicles that filmed there.)

I love to visit filming locations for television shows or movies, like wandering around London and taking pictures of Speedy’s cafe and the doorway used to double for 221B Baker Street in Sherlock, or grabbing a selfie with the MI6 building behind me because of James Bond. When I was there, Benedict Cumberbatch was performing in Hamlet, so there were many fans roaming around. I had a brief conversation with two women from Germany that consisted of the words “Sherlock” and “fall” and “hospital” as we took pictures of St Bart’s. I don’t speak German, they didn’t speak much English, but we were all fluent in fandom. It was beautiful.

Researching the history of a location and how its connected to pop culture, like discovering that there has been a pub on the site of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street since the 1500’s, makes my heart happy. Did you know Charles Dickens was once a patron there, as well as Mark Twain and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and it has appeared in books like Agatha Christie’s The Million Dollar Bond Robbery? Me neither! Had I known all that before I enjoyed a cider there I would have made it last longer to soak up the history of the place!

Is there a vacation in your future? Not sure what to do while away? Go online and see if there are any pop culture hot spots in the area. It’s so fun to watch a movie or see a show on the telly and have the chance to say, “I’ve been there!”

Safe travels!