I like to bring you lots of images and it’s not always possible – thankfully in this case, there are lots of photos!

One of the things I really enjoy is exploring old buildings – especially if they’re in original condition. When we last visited London in February 2005, we were able to get a peek inside the old Midland Grand Hotel. Built in 1873, it’s the impressive building next to Kings Cross St Pancras Station and the scene of many films and the Spice Girls’ video clip for “Wannabe”. It had been closed for a long time and was in the process of restoration – however as you can see from these photos they hadn’t gotten very far.

Fast forward to today, and I read that next week the newly refurbished hotel is reopening. Now called the St Pancras Renaissance London Hotel is all very posh and international – I’m pleased to see that they’ve done a good job at restoring the public areas but the bedrooms themselves have that generic look that international hotels tend to have.

There’s a link to a gallery here if you’d like to see how it looks now. The wonderful staircase looks better than ever – and I did take an awful lot of photos of it because it’s quite spectacular, although I quite like the faded grandeur of the tiles and wallpapers in my photos. I love the colours of rusty red, teal and gold.

As always, click on the thumbnail to see in full, click again for full size. My camera’s not the best (it was six years ago), a little out of focus for some shots and rather dark in almost all – there was no lighting and it was closed to the public but I hope you enjoy them.