20. Holborn

Sunday 24th November 4.45pm.

I figured that a Sunday afternoon in the weeks before Christmas was exactly the kind of peak time Transport for London suggest you avoid using Covent Garden station so despite being on the Plaza I opted to walk to Holborn instead. It's only two stops from King's Cross, neither of them very long, and on another day I might have been tempted just to walk the whole way instead.

The outside is one of those grand but quite restrained entrances, but inside is the usual rabbit warren of tunnels and stairs to get you down to platform level, with so many twists and turns it's hard to know quite where you've ended up. But the platforms for the Piccadilly line at least have been smartened up with metal cladding on the walls instead of tiling, with pictures inspired by the British Museum (which is very nearby), including wrestling naked Greeks which I stupidly forgot to take a picture of.

Wikipedia entry here.

19. Blackfriars

Saturday 23rd November 2013. 11.30am.

Stupidly it's not a station I even knew existed, despite walking past the new entrance on the south bank of the Thames a few times in recent years. I thought it was an Overground station, and a mainline station, because so much attention has been given to the bridge with its roof of solar panels.

But it turns out it's a Tube station too, albeit one that had been shut for three years, which is clearly the amount of time it takes me to forget things. It's actually quite useful for that poorly served bit of south London near Tate Britain if you're feeling too lazy to walk so I expect our paths will cross again, and I'd definitely like to use the entrance south of the river as well just to see how that works.

Like all new Tube buildings it's light and airy, with wide platforms and corridors, tons of public space in neutral colours, and a big glass building when you get to street level. It'll be interesting to see how history looks on these kind of designs once they start to age a little.

Wikipedia entry here.