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.