a cathedral to trains
The newly-refurbished London St Pancras International station that opened in November 2007 to provide Eurostar high speed service to Paris and Brussels is a block from my hotel so I decided to wander over there to check it out. There’s history in this building so history and architecture buffs should read this wonderfully rich overview of the building from Wikipedia. Originally built in 1868 at a cost of £438,000 it appears to have cost about £70 million to rebuild it not including the cost of creating a huge underground tunnel under East London for the high speed Eurostar trains. Travel to Brussels and Paris via the Channel Tunnel takes about 1 hour 45 minutes, much faster than flying from any of the London airports.
It’s hard to describe the sensation that hits you when you walk into the station from the southern side off the Euston Road - it is like entering the world’s largest cathedral but a cathedral that’s been purpose built to worship glass, steel and technology. [These two pictures I took don't convey how massive the station is.] Even with it’s modern makeover you can tell that back in 1868 it was a modern architectural marvel - the roof alone, a giant arch of glass is breathtaking. The strangest part of the experience is the silence; although hundreds of people are moving through the station and the trains are standing, waiting to speed their human cargo off to the continent, you could hear a pin drop. Given that the station sports Europe’s longest champagne bar it reaffirms the idea that travel is not about the destination it’s the time spent getting there.