King's Cross Station ☆☆☆

Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station (Photo by Márcio Cabral de Moura)
Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station
Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station, King's Cross Station, London (Photo by Márcio Cabral de Moura)
King's Cross Station's western concourse, which opened for the 2012 Olympics, designed by John McAslan, King's Cross Station, London (Photo by Never House)
En route to Hogwarts, King's Cross Station, London (Photo by Mayra Nagata)

This London rail station was catapulted to fame as the location of Platform 9 3/4 in the Harry Potter books and movies

Why does a train station merit inclusion on the sightseeing list? Because London's King's Cross Station is the fictional location of the famous platform 9-3/4 where Harry Potter used to catch the Hogwarts Express.

It's the perfect sightseeing excursion when you have half an hour to kill before your train.

Tracks 9 and 10 are actually in a seperate shed from the main station—and, sadly, there's not actually a barrier between them. (Well, there is one, but muggle can't see it.)

However, the station has thoughfully labelled the wall at the back of the shed "Platform 9 3/4" and embedded a luggage cart half-in/half-out of the bricks, as if it had been abandoned while passing through en route to a certain scarlet steam train (or, more likely, the young wizard pushing it is merely wearing an invisibility cloak and has paused because he noticed muggle were watching him and is rght now holding his breath and hoping you'll just move along shortly so he can catch his train).

Have a full hour to spare and appetitie whetted for all things literary? Next door to King's Cross is the glrious Victorian redbrick train station of St. Pancras, and on the other side of that lies the woefully under-visited British Library.

King's Cross Station Tours
 

These might include King's Cross Station

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Tips

How long should I spend at King's Cross?

Well, however long you have to wait for the train, really...

But if you're here to see Platform 9 3/4, it doesn't take too long to snap those keepsake photographs—but keep in mind there is often a line of other Potterites waiting to do the same thing, so it could be 5 minutes, it could be 20 minutes.

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