King’s Cross

Today I’m doing a rather short walk around King’s Cross. To get there, naturally, I take the Piccadilly line tube, which takes quite some time due to a signal failure earlier today. The King’s Cross St Pancras underground station to both railway stations that are located here: the King’s Cross station, which is part of the National Rail network and the international St Pancras station.

On this photo from the King’s Cross station I have captured a very typical sight for any rail station in London: people impatiently watching the train departure notice board.

The station is surrounded by King’s Cross Square, which is a pretty large public space and is relatively new: it was only opened in 2013.

As I look around, that colourful graffiti-covered building across Euston Road immediately catches my attention. Quite surprisingly, that’s a Barclays Bank branch and not some sort of a modern art gallery

And here are some other, more traditional-looking buildings that I see as I walk around the station.

This is just some little pretty street café, which is for some reason completely empty – or maybe it’s just that no one wants to sit outside, as it’s not the most amazing weather ever today.

The terracotta colour building across the road is the older, original part of the St Pancras International station, which is a terminus for Eurostar services to Paris, Lille and Brussels, and also for trains to East Midlands.

The building has a very beautiful clock tower built in Victorian Gothic style.

And that is the modern part of St Pancras International, which, I have to say, is a far less impressive construction.

Someone once told me that this whole area looked dodgy and completely dreadful just a few years ago, and it’s really fascinating to see it transformed into such a vibrant new quarter with modern buildings, restaurants and bars. Ahead of me in this picture is King’s Boulevard.

Between two of those buildings I notice a very nice square, which turns out to be Pancras Square.

It really does look very nice and cosy with that lawn, the trees, the flowers, the café and the colourful buildings.

I keep walking up King’s Boulevard until I see my good old friend Regent’s Canal and stop to take picture of it on both sides of the bridge.

This place is Granary Square and Wikipedia says that it’s roughly the same size as Trafalgar Square. The square has a large fountain and I see many kids playing here barefoot, despite the fact that it’s not at all warm today, as I already mentioned above. An interesting piece of information about this fountain: you can download an app which allows you to interact with the fountain and play the Snake game on it.

There are a few really good restaurants on Granary Square, and even though it seems to be a somewhat remote and isolated place, those restaurants are always pretty full.

Interestingly, those tables and chairs don’t seem to belong to any of the restaurants, they just look like they are there on their own, but of course I might be mistaken.