Arcticterntalk.org

What Do You Find At Kings Cross In An Hour?

Kings Cross used to be a quintessentially dubious area. Often best avoided . Over the last few years with predominantly the regeneration of the old Kings Cross and St Pancras stations and the Eurostar arrival, things have changed enormously. 

Walking between Euston and Kings Cross, there are expensive hotels, The Pullman, looking expensive and being expensive. For a walk-in customer the rack rate for a room was advertised as £465 a night however for a suite you could pay over £600. New bars and restaurants and generally an area where it would be best to have some money in your pocket before arriving. The old offices at Kings Cross have been turned into a highly expensive hotel, The Renaissance, where Roman Abramovich’s car can often be seen parked outside. The large Kings Cross station and Renaissance hotel loom over the British Library looking like a modern day Hogwarts. 

Further on one can walk over the Regents Canal and arrive at a complex of brand new restaurants and bars including Dishoom, for which an hours wait in a queue is the norm for a table.

Over the other side of the road away from the station dodgy dealings still take place with reports of drug dealers and drug users together with street workers. But step outside The Pullman hotel and walk in the opposite direction to Euston Road, and one finds a residential area, Somers Town. There are schools. community centres, playgrounds and a run down looking pub, The Cock Tavern. The impressive Crick Institute sits on the edge of Somers Town. 

This morning I had an hour to spare and went for a walk to get my 10,000 steps a day and just followed my nose in choosing where to go. The streets were clean, children were smiling, some children were even queuing to get into a school. A few odd objects adorned the streets including an old toilet. But this was a nice place, a safe place and a small haven in normality sitting in the midst of a bustling city, where normal people went about their everyday lives.