Harry Potter Conquest

Like a dream come true, well almost. Hajat semenjak dari Malaysia, mesti pergi tempat-tempat lokasi filem Harry Potter. Bak kata Ally Iskandar dan jurualih bahasa ASTRO, terasa begitu “teruja” sekali semasa merangka perjalanan ke London kali ini.

Seperti ala-ala siri Jejak Rasul, kami memulakan perjalanan masing-masing secara berasingan dari tempat kami bermastautin sementara di UK. Now, we can call ourselves, Penjejak Badai.. eh.. silap.. Penjejak Harry Potter. Dalam bahse omputehnye “Harry Potter Conquest”.

Go through the brick walls to get to platform 9 3/4. Just make it casual, make it a little bit of a run if you are nervous.

The Conquest starts on the morning of Saturday the 19^th Feb after we make rounds through the Porto Bello Market (not in picture). From here, we took the tube and headed towards King’s Cross St Pancras Station, for the most obvious reason. This is the place where Harry and his fellow friends boarded the train Hogwarts Express that will take them to a journey (nobody knows where exactly Hogwarts is). Where else can we find Platform 9 ¾. ..imitating like in the movie, but looked pretty much a fake signboard and the figure of half trolley being attached to the wall have already excited us. Well.. not only us, there are a number of other visitors that only just realized about this newly formed (fake) Platform. Nevertheless, we got excited and took more pictures.

Look at the time, the Hogwarts Express must have already left.


Hang on to your ticket Harry, its very important. But Hagrid, there must be a mistake, it says platform 9 3/4. There's no such thing, is there?


Arie melaporkan dari Kings Cross: It was reported that this is the location where the muggle sightings of a flying car was believed to be seen.

Then, armed with a book of London’s map and knowledge that the Gringgot’s Wizarding bank is actually the Australian House and that Leaky Couldron was shoot on Charing Cross street, we headed towards Charing Cross tube station taking one of the tube line (I think the brown line since the black line is not operating that day).

To add more fun, we stopped by Trafalgar Square, which was just outside of the tube station, before heading to our original destination. Using the map, and a few ‘we-got-lost’ gestures, a Londoner stopped by, whom are kind enough to show us the way to the place we wanted to go. I didn’t know Londoners are friendly, all I hear was they are quite posh.. and arrogant at some time.. but all this perception was proven wrong just by a friendly gesture from this nice lady whom is waiting to cross the road.

So, when she showed us that Australia House is just down the road on Strand, we knew we were on the right track. I think he have passed by London’s red light district, bars and pubs are all around.. that’s when I think I saw a signboard of SOHO somewhere..

There's no place safer than Gringgot's the Wizard Bank.

Finally, after some 15 minutes walking, we reached the corner connecting two streets. There stood the Australian house. A magnificent building situated at the corner of the street Aldwich and Strand, it stood arrogantly proud bearing the Aussie’s flag.. Real nice architecture.. from the Victorian days perhaps?

After taking our own sweet time having our pictures taken (good thing there’s 3 of us).. we then move onto Aldwich road, just to see what are there to be discovered. To our delight, we came across LSE, King’s College, all those too many theatre houses, and Drury Lane (Theatre Land), as Masyoo kept saying “that’s where the Muffin Man lives”.. Betul kot Muffin Man tinggal situ..???...

In search for Diagon Alley and Leaky Couldron, we found this.

We traced back the steps towards Charing Cross with hope to find Leaky Couldron and Diagon Alley along Aldwich, and Strand Fleet. The map is quite useful, we use a short cut to get to Charing Cross. However, we didn’t exactly know the location of the filming location. With only our imagination and vague memory of the movie, we surveyed the shops and alleys.. those looked old and ugly was Masyoo’s target of the road infront of Leaky Couldron and possible Knockturn Alley location. After a short distance of walking, we encountered a whole lot of people queuing to buy tickets for theatre play or perhaps the movie tickets. That’s when we realized, we are already in Leicester Square. Have we missed it? Or it may be well ahead at the other end of this road? We haven’t gone further up because some of us need to have a call for nature. However, we do enjoyed the vibrant environment on Leicester Square… erm..it will be a good idea to come here during the Premiere of Harry Potter GOF. If anyone wants to invite me,I will surely be up to it.

Later on, we continued to see other highlights of London, the Buckingham Palace to see the Queen.. to see where the Queen lives. Couldn't stand it anymore to be in open air, it was freezing in London, it snowed (akhirnya seleji turun juga buat Masyoo dan Arie..)! Temperature was reported to be -3 C... and all I have on was this lousy bubble jacket, BEKU!

And.. finally the least we found was this witch in the middle of muggle packed town near Covent Garden. She must be really old, look at her hair colour.

Masyoo got really excited because she was standing on the location where the Knight Bus almost collide with another 2 double deckers in HP POA. Night scene, look at those light trails. Splendid!

After coming back to the hotel and take some time off to catch our breath and pray and had packs of Maggie mee, we continued our plan to go to London Bridge. Buying a day travel card have got its advantage. You can go anywhere on the tube and on all the buses at anytime you want, provided its before 12 midnight the day you baught the ticket.

How I get tricked from the day I was born to think that "London Bridge is falling down".. the bridge that is falling down is not London Bridge, it is named Tower Bridge.. London Bridge was just a plain bridge as in the picture of Masyoo above.. Nevertheless we were as excited as ever. Take pictures at all angles, never miss any part of it..

To Masyoo and Arie, had great fun with you guys... jom le kita plan Conquest ll and lll pulak..