We arrived at Liverpool Street station in London, on our way to a wine tasting, and wanted to coffee and cake or food first at Liverpool Street station because wine tastings often give you only dry crackers and one doesn't want to drink on an empty stomach.
Liverpool Street station is edged with cafes bars and restaurants and shops, like so many stations nowadays in central London, such as Bond Street (mostly underground), Baker Street station, Paddington Euston and many more. You can stop at a station eating place before continuing on to your destination, or arrange to meet a friend at a coffee bar or pub, or stop there for a farewell drink or meal, before going off home in different directions.
Having travelled into central London from a distant suburb my first thought was a toilet and I didn't want to buy coffee from a kiosk or small shop, and then have to leave others eating or drinking whilst running miles across the station. The toilet advertised was down a flight of stairs and cost 30p. What - 30p!
Imagine a family of five, parents and three children, all wanting to go through a turnstile, if only to supervise the children, on arrival at the station, then again after a couple of drinks, whether beer, wine, water, juice or caffeinated coffee stimulating the bladder. That would be £3 just to go to the toilet!
We hurried on and I saw a large pub, a Wetherspoon pub, my favourite. I reckoned a large pub must have a toilet. Besides they have a food menu so it was worth while checking them out in case I needed to go back later.
Sure enough, a huge pub with elegant, traditional decor, and a Ladies toilet (up lots of stairs) with grand seats in the toilet. I tried sitting in one. Not very comfortable. But great to look at. Would be good, height, low so if baby fell its not far and you can reach the clutter of baby's nappies and so on placed on the floor, suitable escape for a nursing mother.
After that we found a Caffe Nero. One of our number wanted not beer - because we were off to drink wine anyway, but coffee. A good thing I went to the toilet in Wetherspoon. Opposite then outside the front entrance to the station at the top of the station steps in a colonnade was a Caffe Nero, a family favourite.
They offered an excellent coffee and cream, a great blueberry yogurt muesli, newspapers you could read for free and others you could buy. But no toilets!
Finally, on my return trip through the station I stopped at the information desk and asked, "Is there a coffee shop or restaurant with toilets - where you don't have to pay 30p!"
"Yes," she said, "Upstairs in McDonalds." So that's the place for food, drink and toilets for families.
I picked
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