Welcome to October! And boy, am I feeling it! From a nice sunny, warm weekend temperatures have plummeted into the 'gee, I really wish I had gloves and a scarf' realm very quickly. I'm not impressed!
Anyways, this picture is clearly not of me wearing gloves. It's a shot of the inside of Paddington Station! More specifically, trains. Paddington Station is my new work 'neighbour', filling in the across the street void filled by ugly 1960s buildings at my former work site. It is also my best bet for lunchtime entertainment. What you can't see in this picture is that behind me there are about 8000 shops and food places. However, there are also about a million people trying to make purchases in each one and a considerable proportion of these people are lugging large suitcases, making it quite difficult to get around.
So what exactly goes on then? Okay, so I leave my building, cross the street and negotiate to separate lanes of taxis (aka, I walk through the taxi rank) to get into a side entrance to the station. At this point trains are in front of me, and on the right there is a large open area with food spots on the right (including McDonalds and a pasty place). If you continue towards the right you pass into what is essentially a food court, separated from the main station by a big glass wall. It seems to actually be temperature controlled, today it feeling noticeable warmer on the other side. In this little area, spread over multiple floors, you have a small Sainsburys, a Starbucks (plus two other coffee places), an Eat (thank goodness), a Boots (I went there today), Marks & Spencer Simply Food, a Krispy Kreme, Yo-Sushi, a pub, and some other temptations. Oh, plus if you go outside the glass walled area back into the main station, you get a number of stalls, including a smoothie stand, the standard train station baguette option, a Burger King, a cookie place, a bagel place, a Sweet Factory cart (not factory so much), and, of course, the Paddington Bear at Paddington Station stall.
Sadly the station is really as far as my neighborhood exploration has taken me this week, thanks to the weather and a site visit yesterday! Apparently we are near 'Little Venice', so I'm hoping to check it out soon!
3 comments:
I've been very impressed in England, Italy and France with the baguette sandwiches sold at train stations. Oh, and the Diet Coke (or Coca Light) to go along with them. Why or why can't the U.S. pick up on that!
not being a train geek or an engineer please take the following with some degree of myth and some degree of fact!
i belive the train system in the UK had something to do with a Brunnel - a famous engineer! i could say more but ill probably be wrong! well the train system in the UK after being the best in the world didnt see any new lines or much investment at all for 100 years until the new high speed 1 came about linking london to paris and enabling the trains to travel at the same speed in the UK as in france...anyways a little of track...the Brunnel part of Paddington train station is in my opinion quite simply an amazing building considering the era it comes from and the age of it...now i think they expanded the station and constructed a similar building next door to the brunnel one! now if you go and stand out side the station today it is very obvious which one is brunnel influence and which one is its newer neighbour!!
margo said the same thing to me coming out of the gym! (about baguettes) - i guess my only real knowledge is now 12 years out of date from when i got the train to school! but back then the choice was not so good! i did though have a credit system at petersfield train station the guy got to know all the school kids that got the train daily and we all had tabs (max £5)!!!! ahhh the memories! then when i got home i had 2 slices to chocolate spread (cadbury) on white - now i could get away with that as i grew about 4 ft in a year!
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