Back in London: our new home

We arrived back in London post-Paris on Monday 6th of Feb via Eurostar. We stayed a night in Canary Wharf with one of 2 London friends, the lovely Georgina, and picked up our keys the next day for our serviced apartment in Earls Court.

Earls Court is west of the cbd, and is where all the aussies hang out (we discovered pretty quickly). Our apartment is great, but is roughly the size of a bathroom. It is approx half the size of our old port melbourne apartment, and to get ready in the mornings I have to dress in the lounge room as the bathroom and bedroom are too small.

We immediately went apartment hunting - and had a very rude awakening as to the state of the London rental market. For each apartment that is available in London, there are 10 people on the waiting list ready to take it the moment it comes on the market place.

We started by exploring the different areas - originally we thought we would like the Chelsea area (as I am clearly a modern day Princess Diana or Margaret Thatcher, famous Chelsea residents). One walk down Kings Road Chelsea put that idea to rest - too many yummy mummies botoxed to the eyeballs and not nearly enough nightlife. Similar to Brighton really.

We really liked Notting Hill Gate and Angel (on suggestions from ex Londonner Tara), but Angel won hands down once I discovered that catching the tube to work in peak hour is ... an exercise in making friends (and enemies), to say the least. A 20 min ride in non peak hour is approximately 45 mins in peak hour, standing and sweating through your many jackets and thermals with hundreds of other people. 650,000 people catch the red line train (below) every single day. Madness.

Angel is 2 stops on the tube, or 1.8miles walk to work. It has tonnes of pubs, and so far everyone we have gone out with has suggested Angel as the meeting point. Its similar ish to Prahran (some nice spots with some dodgy spots, and is insanely priced). It is slightly north east on the map below.

We spoke to no less than a dozen real estate agents, and none of them except for 1 had anything on their books even available to show us. The 3 places we did get shown were... unlivable unless you are a uni student. One didnt have a shower (only a bath), one had only a single bed that touched all the walls of the bedroom (M would have to sleep on the couch) and the other was in a council flat (commission flat).

In the end we paid a real estate agent 400 pounds to show us 3 places before they became available on the open market, and we got a flat that was up for about 3 hours. Its great, nice and large (relatively speaking) with a shower and lots of room for international visitors.

I will post photos when we move in !

xx