Adventures in London! City and Culture.

   

Adventures in London!  City and Culture.

By: Kendal Sendek

King's Cross Vs. St. Pancras

St. Pancras Station

King's Cross Station

These two stations are right across the street from each other, yet while they are so close they are completely different!  Both are very large stations, but the structure and interior are quite opposite.  We took the tube to King's Cross to see Platform 9 3/4 and the Harry Potter shop, this station was really busy and had a more cold industrial feel.  This station was named "King's Cross" after King George IV in the 19th century.  This railway was built under the Regent's Canal, in comparison St. Pancras was build over it.  St. Pancras was built to out shine King's Cross, which it did!  This station is huge and brilliant both on the inside and out!  St. Pancras is also an international making visits from France and even Rome easier.  Both of these stations were in a rough area for a while, but due to shifts and changes the area has improved.  It was really neat to go into stations that are so close in proximity and compare them! I definitely preferred St. Pancras to King's Cross, I was surprised when the station was a lot less crowded, but it might have seemed that way due to the set up and structure of the buildings. 

           Camden Town Translated into Culture

Street shot of Camden Town

For the second time this trip we returned to Camden Town.  Since it was closing down the last time we went the chance to experience it slipped away.  This time though it was open and super busy with people shopping and walking the streets!  We all kept saying it was like the South Side of London.  The street vendors were out and it seemed as though many different ones where owned by the same group of people.  Most of the goods were cheap and touristy, but the shops contain really cool clothes and other things.  As we were walking around I noticed so many people wearing and   owning things that I saw in the shops.  I didn't realize that even the locals really incorporate these places into their everyday life.  This market really gave a glimpse into how the shops permeate into the fabric of London's society.  In all cities there is the "go to" place to shop and after I started to notice what people where wearing I started to see people wearing the same things, its amazing the power a label can have, as well as the power of fashion trends.    

The Development of a Millennium...Or So We Thought 

 Well we thought we were on the Millennium Bridge...as it turns out we were wrong.  We walked across the Hungerford Bridge instead, which is also a pedestrian foot bridge crossing the Thames, but just not the one we expected.  It turns out what we found was cooler than I could have imagined!  We stumbled across a pile of skateboards off the one side, I was like "oh my gosh I'm putting that in the blog and calling it skateboard graveyard!".  To my surprise when I looked up the origin of this peculiar sight I found that it actually is in a reality a known (and labelled) skateboard graveyard.  As it turns out there is a well known skate spot (Undercroft) under Queen Elizabeth Hall, and as skateboards break as subculture has developed out of adding them to this final resting place.  Not only do people just add to this, there is even another level to this story.  There is an actual website that keeps track of the "plots" (number of bodies) and even has a place where you can write your dead skateboard an obituary!  I never expected that there was such a story behind what seems like just a pile of junk, but I am really happy I looked it up and found out all of this information.  http://hungerfordbridge.pbworks.com  If you want check out this site you can see some stuff, but have to join in order to really explore it, or you can just google Hungerford Skateboard Graveyard.  Its definitely worth checking out!

A skateboard graveyard