When I was young I liked to read about cities I never dreamed I’d visit. And that’s how I fell in love with the name of the London train station and neighborhood known as King’s Cross — or “King’s X,” as this most English of place-names was sometimes gracefully abbreviated. But when I first moved to England, in 1996, grace wasn’t so easy to find amid the widespread social and economic challenges that had come to define this corner of north London. Today, much (but by no means all) of the neighborhood has been transformed by swank restaurants and shops, expensively repurposed industrial structures, and the glittering glass offices in which the gears of a decent chunk of London’s booming knowledge economy turn ever faster. Welcome, in these Brexit-tossed times, to King’s Cross, and to one of London’s most fascinating stories of adversity and renewal.
Friday
1) 2:30 p.m. Urban fervor
For longtime residents, the transformation of King’s Cross has meant opportunities, but also challenges, including gentrification, crowds and controversies over facial recognition cameras. You’re safe from all three at Calthorpe Community Garden. This verdant hide-out — the product of community activism, on a site once earmarked for offices — offers secluded benches, a swing and the chance to wander past garden plots lovingly tended by some of London’s friendliest strangers. Enjoy a cheese and pickle toastie at the homey cafe (£3.50, or about $4.50; the pickles are from cucumbers grown in the garden).
36 Hours in Kings Cross
2) 4 p.m. A tale of two stations
Only a “chilly Londoner,” wrote E.M. Forster, would fail to find character in London’s great railway terminals. To Margaret, in “Howards End,” King’s Cross station “had always suggested Infinity” — and to think she never saw the new concourse, opened in 2012, which added soaring space and much-needed light to a hub that’s busier than many airports. Keep an eye out for the sign for Platform 9 ¾, where Harry Potter caught the express to Hogwarts. Then cross the street to the spellbinding St. Pancras International station, a hub for commuter and national services as well as high-speed Eurostar trains to continental Europe. The battle to preserve and restore this Victorian Gothic masterpiece took decades, and many Londoners would agree that it’s now the jewel in the crown of railway terminals that encircle the capital. Welcome just-disembarked Parisians with a tune on the public pianos — one’s a signed gift from Elton John. Then snag a selfie with the statue of the poet John Betjeman (whose advocacy helped save the station) or with the gold-leafed, 18-foot-wide clock. After the previous clock was dropped by a crane in the 1960s, a train guard gathered the shards in a wheelbarrow and took them home to his farm. Dent — the clockmakers responsible for Big Ben — and another firm relied on these fragments to create the replica you see today.
3) 5 p.m. Happy hours
The old ticket office of St. Pancras station was the very image of Victorian splendor. Now it’s home to the Booking Office, one of my favorite bars. Here, just yards from gleaming Eurostar trains, fete Anglo-continental harmonies with a Lavender Vesper (£13): an entente cordiale that includes Chase vodka and gin from Herefordshire, French vermouth, and bee pollen from Lille’s Sébastopol Market. Then stick your landing at the German Gymnasium, one of Britain’s first purpose-built gyms when it opened in the 1860s; today it’s a buzzing restaurant. The parallel bars are long gone, though grabbing a prime-time reservation here might qualify as an Olympic event. Award yourself the Schupfnudeln (hand-rolled potato noodles, celeriac, mushroom, truffles and butter sauce, £19.50).
4) 7:30 p.m. “Only Last Night I Found Myself Lost …”
My musical introduction to King’s Cross came via the song with the same name by the Pet Shop Boys, the British techno-dance-pop duo. The tough neighborhood in which the group’s lead singer, Neil Tennant, found a haunting metaphor for Thatcherite Britain was also home to a thriving club scene. Today, concerts at St. Pancras Old Church showcase mostly emerging artists as well as the likes of Phoebe Bridgers, Sam Smith and Sinead O’Connor. On Jan. 17, the London-born Patrick Wolf — “imagine The Cure channelling Bruce Springsteen,” according to The Telegraph — will perform (from £22.50). Or see who’s playing at the Water Rats, the pub that in a former incarnation hosted Bob Dylan’s first British concert, in 1962; the Pogues’ first concert, in 1982; and the first London show of Oasis, in 1994.
Saturday
5) 10 a.m. Shop ’til you …
In the mid-19th century a set of buildings was constructed to allow coal to be lowered from just-arrived trains and then packed for distribution across London. Today, Coal Drops Yard (renovated by Heatherwick Studio, the King’s Cross-based firm that also designed the Vessel at Manhattan’s Hudson Yards) is home to a shopping venue that’s the epitome of postindustrial chic. Start at Wolf & Badger, a high-end stockist of independent artisans, where you can prepare for winter with vegan lip balm by Hertfordshire-based Evolve Beauty (£12) and English-spun Merino wool wear by Peregrine, founded in 1796 (scarves in olive or wheat, £47). Move on to Tom Dixon’s interior design shop, where the star attractions are the geometrically swirling Spring pendant lamps (from £565). Finally, in a metropolis in which homelessness is rising, don’t miss Boutique by Shelter. Purchases of donated designer and vintage items — including the occasional Hermès handbag and Burberry suit — benefit Shelter, a prominent homelessness charity.
6) 11 a.m. A mad day out
It’s hard to believe that St. Pancras Old Church was once a riverside country chapel, distinguished by its origins (the church claims to have been “a site of Christian worship since the 4th century”); its well-stocked graveyard (the scene of body-snatching in Charles Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities”); and its distance from a much smaller London (“walk not there too late,” as one 16th-century chronicler summarized the church’s rural, thief-ridden environs). The customizable tours are highly recommended. Ask your guide about the shape of British phone boxes, disinterments on a scale that would make Stephen King blanch, and potential visits from a motley gallery of ghosts, including Mary Shelley, John Lennon and the son of Benjamin Franklin.
7) 1 p.m. Digging in
Of all the alterations that the Industrial Revolution inflicted on Britain’s landscape, few are as pleasing as the Regent’s Canal, cut in the early 19th century to link the Grand Union Canal at Paddington to the River Thames at Limehouse. Stroll along the towpaths, overgrown with sycamore, ash and willow, then stop at Word on the Water, a bookshop on a canal boat, where you can warm your hands over the wood stove and commune with Star, an elderly beagle-collie who’s spent her whole long life on boats.
8) 3 p.m. Royal London
Kings Place is home to the offices of the Guardian newspaper and also to one of London’s best-curated selections of concerts, talks and exhibitions. Start your explorations at Pangolin London, a sculpture-focused gallery that has an art trail around the complex. If you pinwheel backward into the icy canal while admiring the works, as I nearly did, the Rotunda restaurant offers hot chocolate and warm blankets on its waterside deck.
9) 6:30 p.m. Sweet and bitter
Yotam Ottolenghi, the chef and cookbook author (and Times contributor), is a fan of walks along the Regent’s Canal; his kids play in the fountains of Granary Square; and the most popular of his London restaurants is in nearby Islington. In other words, he’s the perfect Londoner to take yours truly on a food tour of the new King’s Cross. For a quick bite, he recommended the tasty, too-big-to-finish sandwiches from Bodega Rita’s. For a proper meal he chose Barrafina, an upscale tapas restaurant, where he ordered his go-to dishes: arroz negro with cuttlefish and Iberian pork (£21), the classic tortilla (£9) and a green salad (£5). I won’t forget how joyfully my favorite chef scraped out the last of the arroz negro: “When it caramelizes it goes sweet and bitter,” he explained. “It’s a different world when you hit the bottom of the pan.”
Sunday
10) 10 a.m. Somers time
Squeezed between St. Pancras and Euston stations is the quiet, mostly residential neighborhood of Somers Town. Start with a walk through the Ossulston Estate. Completed not long before World War II, in the heart of what had once been known as the Somers Town slum, this homage to Viennese-style modernism has been described as one of London’s most architecturally important housing projects. Then stop outside 15 Phoenix Road, the former home of Henry Croft, the orphan, street sweeper and rat catcher behind the “Pearly Kings and Queens” — a uniquely London working-class tradition, still going strong, that involves charitable fund-raising, inherited titles and elaborately pearl-bedecked garb. Finally, rest your feet at the Somers Town Coffee House — a pub, despite the name, that feels as local as anything could in this cosmopolitan corner of town. An English breakfast, including vegan options, starts at £8.
11) 12 p.m. Mother tongue
If written culture has a center of gravity, it’s lurking somewhere in the stacks of the British Library. The collection — the world’s second largest — contains more than 170 million items. In terms of shelf space, it grows by five miles per year. Behind-the-scenes tours (£10; book online) finish in the Treasures Gallery, home to the fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus, the earliest surviving Bible to contain the complete New Testament; handwritten first drafts of Beatles lyrics; a ninth-century Chinese version of the Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist text, described as the “world’s earliest dated, printed book”; and Jane Austen’s desk. The library’s delightful shop has something for everyone on your list, including Literary London micro jigsaw puzzles (150 tiny pieces; £9.50) and ingenious stools and side tables made of recycled paper (from £25).
12) 2 p.m. “Fear contended with desire …”
Around Caledonian Road are numerous monuments to an older King’s Cross. Start outside the Scala, once London’s legendary “cinema of sin.” A filmmaker called it “a country club for criminals and lunatics,” while my friend recalls hauling shopping bags full of homemade popcorn to her first experiences of cult, horror and pioneering LGBT films here. Today the Scala houses a nightclub. Next up is the nonprofit Housmans Bookshop. Named for Laurence Housman — peace activist, suffragist and younger brother of the poet A.E. Housman — this haven for the anti-establishment opened in King’s Cross in 1959. Sections include “Trotsky,” “Gramsci” and “Anarchist Key Thinkers”; there’s a fine selection of books about King’s Cross and London, too. Finish at Drink, Shop & Do, an art, music, food and learning venue set up after the 2007-8 financial crisis to encourage creativity and community. Afternoon tea in this former adult entertainment store is £29. The neon “Adult & Erotica” sign is original, while the classes — recently, on how to bling your beret, paint watercolor portraits of dogs, or sculpt a clay version of Tina Turner — are all the proof you need that King’s Cross, like London, is never the same place twice.
Lodging
King’s Cross is packed with accommodations, including the occasional canal houseboat on Airbnb (around £130) and the YHA London St. Pancras youth hostel on Euston Road (from £16 for a shared room).
Or splurge at the aptly named St. Pancras Renaissance. First opened as the Midland Grand Hotel in 1873, it reopened in 2011 after a comprehensive renovation. Now it’s one of the grandest hotels in London. After I win the lottery, I plan to sequester myself, Howard Hughes-like, in one of the double-height Chambers Suites which offer mesmerizing views right into the station (from £529).
Another monumental renovation, right across Euston Road, is now home to Europe’s first Standard Hotel. It took years and many millions to turn this Brutalist former municipal structure into the luxury hotel that opened last summer — even though, as one employee told me with a smile, “it already looked like a Standard.” Single rooms from around £170; King’s Terrace rooms, some with balconies that feature on-brand, barely-concealed outdoor bathtubs, recently from around £450.
Mark Vanhoenacker is a columnist for the Financial Times and the author of “Skyfaring” and “How to Land a Plane.”
