In the Smoke









London


St. Pancras International Station.


 The Champagne Bar next to the Paris train at St. Pancras


One of my favourite places in London is St. Pancras Station. There are enough bars and cafes here to meet people and hangout. The station has a level of romance you might associate with trains departing for Paris Gare du Nord (and Brussels). Two hours and your are sipping chaud Suchard chocolat at the Gare du Nord brasserie. It is easy to become blasé about trips to Paris so I won't and move onto London.




The St. Pancras Concourse

Okay so it was raining this time. but in a maritime climate you gotta expect inclement weather. Anyway inside the station you are dry and it is a thing of beauty. Vast quantities of pound sterling went into restoring and remodelling this station back to former glories.

I took a tube to Leicester Square and walked the short distance to the National Gallery which houses room after room of nationally and internationally significant paintings. Entrance is free, thanks to the former Labour Culture Minister Mark Fisher who I have once spoken to. I nearly worked for him but he chose someone else. I have forgiven him.



 Claude Lorrain, Seaport and the Embarcation of the Queen of Sheba (1648)

It's probably my favourite painting in the National Gallery. She currently sits next to JMW Turner's works of similar ilk, at Turner's request.



 And now to the Bloomsbury district. My home for 14 years.


 The Charlotte Street Hotel



 The Lobby 



Spent a wonderful evening with the most erudite man I know. Professor Luckhurst. We talked of Kunming, Sai Gon, Mizoguchi, Lovecraft and Kobayashi. The Silver Needle tea was $10 a pot. So that's a tiny pot each. Arguably the best tea available it might have been actual 'Iron Goddess' tea. In five years they'll call it that and charge $20 for it. I have had tastier teas but perhaps not finer. Not to be taken with pork scratchings, dry roasted peanuts or other strong tasting foods.


Hotel Bar



What London can give you on some days.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsk8QQj5Nrc‎ 

A piano in the heart; La Ritournelle Remix


 The Church at St. Martins in the Field and new Routemaster Bus with illuminated rain



Cheerio

Happy Travelling!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Visiting Bessho in the Japanese Alps

Image
Welcome to readers from Myanmar and Namibia Bessho, Ueda. The Asama shinkansen from Ueno station Tokyo took a supremely comfortable hour to roll into Ueda City. From there a small, six carriage, narrow gauge train called the Dentetsu took me on the thirty minute ride to the village of Bessho. I was there to feel the contrast with Tokyo’s greater metropolitan district populated by 44 million people and to visit the best example of a wooden temple in Japan. Even though Bessho had a population of 2361 people only a handful people were visible at any one time. It was quiet. Uematsuya At Uematsuya Ryokan What a nice surprise A matcha tea served within moments of my arrival The food at Uematsuya is outstanding. To stay for one night with breakfast and dinner cost around $60.  If you like matcha green tea visit:  Making matcha in Uji, Kyoto Here's something about staying in a Japanese Style Roo
Read more

Driving to the Russian border.

Image
It was an invigorating drive down from the Finnmark plateau. It took 7 hours and it snowed incessantly. The road was solid white like a toboggan run. We arrived in Ivalo, a large village razed by the Germans in 1945. Another 40 odd kilometres brought us to the border. There are two choices of border post. The official one at Raya Jooseppi on route 91 to Murmansk and the old border crossing at Paksuniemi.
Read more

Lofoten Dream

Image
So I am in the Arctic Circle again. It's otherworldly in the Lofoten Islands.  Snowstorms come out of nowhere. Driving the European route E4, a rhythm established itself - -  bridge, bend, tunnel, fjord, rain, sun, hail, snowmelt, then freeze, then sea eagle, bridge, bend, tunnel, fjord . . . Many travellers mention the tiny towns towards the end of the archipelago. Personally though I found the archipelago midsection utterly jawdropping. In fact I went back to it. Twice. Happy Travels everyone!
Read more