Hogwarts Express, where are you??

Yesterday I went on an adventure in search of The Hogwarts Express. Don't get your hopes up, I'll let you know straight off the bat, the quest was not a success.

The Hogwarts Express is somewhere in France, touring train stations all over. I think, rather than traveling on a track, they have chosen to apparate it just beyond my reach.

Last night after the parade, my friends Scott and Shane approached me to see if I was interested in going to see "the harry potter train." That is all the information I was given, I had plans to go out with some other people, but all I needed was to hear those four words and everything else was forgotten.

We should have known we were in for an interesting trip when we had to sit on the train for a half hour due to "traffic." I'm not sure how a bunch of trains on tracks can experience traffic, but whatever. While we sat there, I gathered what little information the boys had (what little they knew they had gathered from a mysterious facebook invitation). The invitation boasted The Hogwarts Express, full of costumes and sets from the movie also had such glories as cast members and Hedwig! The train would be closing to visitors at 8pm (it was already 6:30), and it would be at Gare de Lyon. We finally arrived at Gare de Lyon just before 7 and began searching for the train. Scott took it upon himself to ask at an information booth. "Ou est le train Harry Potter?", he asked in his best French. He was answered with a blank, confused stare. "Ou est le train Harry Potter?". Still nothing. "WHERE IS THE HARRY POTTER TRAIN!". "oh! Gare du Nord."

Gare du Nord. Alright. Back to the RER. Led by Shane, we made it to our track to hear an RER train about to pull away. Shane yelled at us to get on, which we did, which we shouldn't have. It led us the opposite direction of our destination. Off at the next stop, we changed tracks, and were finally going the right way. We arrived at Gare du Nord, a gigantic behemoth of a station. At this point, we knew we may not make it on the train but at least wanted to see the thing. Scott wanted to just touch it. Shane threatened to lick it. I just wanted a picture. All three of us thought about kidnapping Hedwig. First thing was first, we had to find it. We began to ask around, and to our dismay, it seemed as if no one had any idea what we were talking about. We finally made our way to the tracks, looked around, obviously didn't see The Hogwarts Express (it would probably be a bit conspicuous). Dejected and heartbroken, we went to the information booth in one last pitiful attempt at finding it.
"The Harry Potter Train? It left."

"It left."















And that was that.

Disappointed, we ate and headed back home, where more unlucky events awaited us. We just missed our bus, so had forty-five minutes or so to kill. I had been invited to meet some people at one of the various Disney Village bars, so we all headed over there to kill some time. Apparently by the time we got there, everyone had already left to go to Hurricanes (the gross night club), so we just sat with a couple English girls at the Sports Bar until it was finally time to head home.

The trip wasn't a complete failure. I spent some quality time with Scott and Shane, who are fantastic. I got my first french "kebap" aka Turkish Sandwhich aka Gyro and a crepe for dessert.
And hey, it's quite the story, right?