London trip: a bit of Harry Potter sightseeing!

It was only during the tour on Friday when I actively realised the connection between London and Harry Potter. Sure, Hogwarts is not in London, but some other places. :-D Additionally, the films were shot in a studio close to London. No, I didn't do the Studio Tour - but that might be a reason to go back at some point!

Anyway, I wouldn't have had time for a lot of Harry Potter sightseeing. I didn't even do one of the self-guided Harry Potter tours (there were maps on sale at a place we passed during the tour). But Harry Potter was at least a small part of the "London all in one"-tour. That's because next to St Clement Danes, there was Australia House, the Australian embassy - which happened to be Gringotts in the films!

(stupid trees ...)

Our tour guide said, if you asked politely, they might even let you inside (ask Google, it must be really cool).

On Saturday, I could also spot a bit of Harry Potter in the British Museum. In the Money exhibition, that we passed, to be precise:

By the way: although it looks more like play money, this is real money, issued by the Isle of Man in the 2000s (not kidding).

In the afternoon, I wanted to go to King's Cross, the famous railway station where the Hogwarts Express departs from platform 9 3/4. We ended up visiting three train stations that are all connected to Harry Potter.

First, we went to King's Cross, of course, because that's the station mentioned in the books and films.

That's what it really looks like at the entrance to platform 9 and 10:

That's how you miss the Hogwarts Express for sure: no access without a valid ticket. :-P But for the fans, there is a fake platform 9 3/4 for taking pictures:

Poor Hedwig ...

And, of course, there's also a Harry Potter shop ... We didn't go in though, because you actually had to queue for entering shop. Maybe another reason to come back sometime, it looked quite cool when ignoring all the people:

Next to King's Cross, there's another station, St Pancras International. I think, that's what you can actually see in the film(s) when they show "King's Cross" from the outside - just because it looks more impressive than the real King's Cross:

Well, and then we took the tube for just one station in order to go to the third railway station: Euston (still confused because of Heuston station in Dublin). That was because J.K. Rowling once said in an interview that she had Euston in mind when writing about the train station in Harry Potter and only noticed her mistake when the book had already been published.
But as you can see, it doesn't really look any better at Euston:

Fact is, J.K. didn't really have the chance to check out the train station when writing the first book: Google Earth didn't exist in the nineties - and J.K. wrote Harry Potter not in London, but in Edinburgh (that's where I'm going at the end of the month, by the way ...).