09:50 pm: the most inconvenient champagne bar in europe
dropped off at St Pancras this evening on my way home from work, for a nosey around. for those of you who don't follow the news, Eurostar moved there today, and that large part of the station which has been closed for around 4 years has finally opened.
it is very shiny.
i mean, seriously shiny.
we'll see how it looks in a few years, though. the walk from the tube to the Midlands platforms isn't actually as bad as i'd feared.
however.
there is a deep lie hidden at the heart of the publicity for the station. it claims to have "Europe's longest champagne bar".
there is indeed a champagne bar on the platform level. and, to be fair, there is a lot of champagne. however. the bar is not especially big. the seating area, is very long.
to my mind, this does not warrant the title "europe's longest champagne bar". instead, by simple principles of geometry, a very long seating area serving a not especially big bar, suffers a long average walk to the nearest seat. thus, it is actually europe's most inconvenient champagne bar.
this is all for now. Sunday may feature loltrains. We'll see.
Tags: bloody trains
They've finally opened that bit just today haven't they? I had to use St Pancras to get to where I was going last weekend, so passed through it on Friday and Monday, and the vast majority of the undercroft bit was inaccessible - the only place open was the ticket office. Thw exit from the tube was mis-signposted and sent me the longest possible route out of the tube station, and then it was a long walk all the way around the side and through to get to the platforms themselves. The platform were very pretty, and I saw the champagne bar and the eurostar trains, and admired the impressively huge train shed, so that bit was good! :)
![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/119467635/1083767) | | From: |  abigailb |
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| Date: | November 15th, 2007 07:54 am (UTC) |
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Yes. It's all open now, apart from some of the retail area and a bit at the very north of the site which will be the new Thameslink station.
Route from tube to MML platforms is into the Western Ticket Hall, to the very end, up stairs, through doors to your right, and then you are in the undercroft of SPI, with a straight run for the domestic platforms. I think the shortest route to the Kent platforms will end up being the old on-street route. Unfortunately we don't get a travelator.
