Going To Hogwarts Through King's Cross Station

We were fresh off a 7 hour flight to London, and instead of grabbing a taxi from the airport, we thought it would be a brilliant idea to try to navigate London's train station to get us closer to our hotel. I like to think that we aren't complete morons, but trying to figure out the workings of a foreign train system when you're completely exhausted was a little more than we could handle. After Jason had to ask the attendant 3 times which train was ours, I had a feeling he was muttering "stupid Americans" under his breath before we finally got it right. Thankfully, that was one of our very few snafus on our trip.

After about a 30 minute ride, we arrived at the station and decided to cut across the street to King's Cross because Mariah had it on her London bucket list to get to Platform 9 ¾.

There were about 50 people milling around in front of it when we arrived, and we were a bit confused as to where the line started. Eventually, the workers told us they only let a handful of people into line at a time, but led us to a line outdoors where they were having people wait their turn to get into the official line so they could keep train station traffic from getting clogged up in the area in front of the Harry Potter platform.

It only took us about 30 minutes of wait time before it was our turn. They give you a wand and let you choose your Hogwarts house color from a selection of scarfs to use as photo props. It was completely free, but they do take your photo, which you have the option to purchase in the gift shop when you are done. We did bring our own camera, and they are totally cool about letting you take your own photos, but you'll only get enough time to snap two or three quickly before they take their own and move you along.

I guess we were Slytherine House as the girls picked out the green scarf for us to wear. Fitting, since we were looking a bit rough still in our flight clothes :)

While we didn't have the magic touch to get through to the Hogwarts Express, we were able to hail a cab outside of King's Cross to take us to the Holiday Inn, which looked pretty magical itself after an exhausting day of planes, trains, and taxi cabs.

Which Hogwarts House do you belong to?