The Clerkenwell neighborhood of London - London Relocation Services - Image via Wikipedia
If you’re making your relocation to London early this month, you may reach a point where you’re in desperate need to do something festive and relaxing after searching to rent London apartments. Understood. No matter what London neighborhood you might be moving to, a very cool one to check out any time of year is Clerkenwell, and it just so happens that there’s an artsy-yet-functional event going on soon that’ll give your eyes something to feast on and perhaps kit out your new London apartment!
A friend of mine, the talented artist Charlene Lam (who’s a fellow expat that moved to London from the US), is curating the work of talented designer-makers for the Creative Clerkenwell stall at the Vitra Christmas Market. Running from 5-22 December, this modern take on a German Christmas Market will be constructed in Vitra’s beautiful furniture showroom, right on Clerkenwell Road, and there will be a range of lovely things to browse, from super affordable to luxurious, with sales benefiting Shelter, the homeless and housing charity. From Creative Clerkenwell’s website:
“Creative Clerkenwell will curate a stall of design-led work from local designer-makers, featuring members of the Craft Central network, including jewellers Amanda Li Hope and Oxx Jewellery, interior accessories designer Michelle Mason, and ceramicist Jo Davies.
Join in the market for nibbles and drinks, try out all the fancy furniture, and meet the designers! It sounds like a fabulous time for one and all and a truly fashionable way to start getting acquainted with London and making a real home out of a London apartment after your international relocation.
But think of this: by 1823, there were 40,000 gas lamps in London that had to be lit one by one by hand thanks to the lamplighters. That’s tremendous! How laborious, and yet how romantic.
In any case, I just stumbled on this other little factoid that you’ll definitely need to be on the lookout for after your London move, as found in Tom Quinn’s London’s Strangest Tales book:
“The year was 1807 and Londoners were eager to do what they could to celebrate the king’s birthday. [...] A German engineer called Albert Winsor was then living in London and he decided to do his bit by installing posts with lamps on top all along one side of The Mall. He set up a small gas tank and built underground pipes connecting the lighting posts with each other and with his gas tank. [...]
These were not the gas lamps we are familiar with from old films about London— [...] Winsor’s lights simply flamed up from the top of their posts, but the world’s first street lights—which these certainly were—caused a sensation across the capital.”
A quite quirky feature of these lights is that Winsor used gun barrels taken from old muskets from the Woolwich Arsenal to make the pipes linking the lamps, as he reasoned those shafts obviously had to withstand a great amount of pressure. As Quinn continues:
“[T]he street that runs from The Mall through St James’s Palace is today one of the last streets in the world still to have traditional mantled gas lamps. They have been there now for more than a century—if you want to see what London looked like at night in Victorian times this is the only place you can still do it.”
I never knew that! Methinks I need to take a field-trip of my own over there! So there you have it. Just a bit of historical whimsy that yet again shows how London has often been a forerunner in progress yet continues to charm us with its strong hold on tradition. When you’re on your viewing day with your London Relocation agent, soak up the atmosphere of these lovely London neighborhoods and ready yourself for all the ways this city will light you up from within.
Mmm...turducken...A little something to whet your appetite for your relocation to London - London Relocation Services - Image via Wikipedia
Sorry for my ghetto title if you’re making an international relocation to London and simply looking for some helpful information for that. Well, I still can’t promise that you’re going to get that in this particular post (please utilize our search tool to find good stuff on London apartments, London neighborhoods, why using a London Relocation agent is so imperative, how to prepare for a London move, etc.), but there’s a topic that I’ve been itching to write about since Thanksgiving, and while I know this is belated, I’m slap-happy today, quite frankly.
Why? Well, allow me to derail the London Relocation Blog to selfishly announce that today I became a NaNoWriMo winner—wooHOO!! NaNoWriMo is a portmanteau for “National Novel Writing Month.” You know from my London Literacy category on this blog that I’m a literary dork who taught high school English before relocating to London from the US, and since then I’ve indulged my passions for reading and writing in London by working freelance as a fiction editor and writing for the London Relocation agency‘s blog and upcoming new website. Well, I also do a lot of fiction writing, and this year was my virgin NaNoWriMo experience, and I was panicked because I’d started the challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel in only one month twelve days late, and, and…as of this afternoon, I did it. And I think I actually managed to not write a bunch of absolute crap. Yay.
So, in case I lost you at “portmanteau,” that’s a single word that is made of two or more words—similar to the aforementioned “NaNoWriMo,” though the term is probably more intended for words like “smog” that derive from “smoke” and “fog.” Anyway, it’s also like what the media loves to do these days with celebrity couples: Bennifer, Brangelina, etc. *barf*
But sometimes the portmanteau is pretty darn fun. As in the case of what I’ve been dying to write about for a week: Turducken, the portmanteau for turkey + duck + chicken. As in stuffing one right inside the other like Russian dolls. All right, now I had never heard of it, but I do now understand that this has become a known novelty in the States for Thanksgiving. But it’s a relatively recent novelty for us Yankees compared to its centuries-old tradition in Europe. In the UK, the concept of a multi-bird dish is probably most well-known in the form of the historic Yorkshire Christmas Pie. According to Hannah Glasse’s classic recipe in Art of Cookery:
“First make a good standing crust, let the wall and bottom be very thick; bone a turkey, a goose, a fowl, a partridge, and a pidgeon.”
The end result looked like a massive meat pie and weighed several dozen pounds. (If interested in reading more about the history of Britain’s meat pies, see my previous post, “Move to London and Eat Yer Humble Pie“). The turducken, then, is not a far stretch for the Brits to consider as a holiday meal, and I’m already seeing pre-made frozen versions of it advertised by the Iceland grocery store by the name “three bird roast” (http://youtu.be/okCvRGrm0E8). Apparently, another common form of the three-bird roast is duck stuffed with chicken stuffed with pigeon. And there are some folks out in Devon who really go nuts and up the ante by doing it with at least a dozen—this article is four years old, but reports on their TWELVE-bird roast and ambitions to go for twenty-one the following year…I could not find documentation on whether they did this, but figure the BBC would’ve known if so. Anyway, here’s the link: http://news.bbc.co.uk.
And if you’re still not grasping just how fun a portmanteau can be, how do ya like this: a vendor at London’s famed Borough Market near London Bridge is selling a variation on the turducken with four different birds. It consists of a goose, pheasant, duck, and chicken…which renders it a “Gophucken.” *blush* (Don’t get it? Try saying it out loud and remember the “ph” = “f”-sound rule from your early reading days. And if you’re offended, blame your own dirty mind and not the London Relocation agency. I’m only reporting on a multi-bird roast, after all; what’s your damage?).
So. If I haven’t made you gag by now with this heart-attack on a platter (I know—I already had you dry-heaving back at “Brangelina”; I’m with ya), here’s to trying new foods as you move to a new country. The turducken might not be regarded as distinctly British, but they seem a lot more open-minded to this sort of thing around here; they still indulge the fruit cake for Christmas, if that’s any indication. A friend of mind is already laboring over this weeks-long process, so perhaps I’ll blog about that next if you’re moving to London, England in time for the holidays and interested in traditional British Christmas fare.
When you make a relocation to London, you’ll discover there might be different taxes you have to pay in the UK than you’ve had to deal with before. It goes without saying that the UK has its own income tax structure that includes contributions to the national healthcare system (NHS), etc., but the ones that usually catch expats moving to London most by surprise are council tax and TV licensing. Today, I’ll explain the latter.
“You need to be covered by a valid TV Licence if you watch or record TV as it’s being broadcast. This includes the use of devices such as a computer, laptop, mobile phone or DVD/video recorder.
It costs £145.50 for colour and £49.00 for a black and white TV Licence.”
If you intend to be the sole occupant of your London apartment and will indeed watch television in it, you are responsible for obtaining your own TV license. If you’ll be lodging in a London flat-share in which you occupy one room of the London property and have a separate tenancy agreement from your flatmate(s), then you are likewise responsible for having your own TV license. If, on the other hand, you are sharing a London apartment rental under a joint tenancy agreement, then one TV license is enough for the entire property (there are exceptions to this rule, however—oddly enough, it could make a difference if you have “exclusive access to a toilet or washing facilities”; what that has to do with television, I don’t know, but they must be sticklers, so you can contact them with questions if you’re unsure).
With regard to that last arrangement, the London Relocation agency often assists groups of students seeking joint tenancy agreements on a shared London apartment to rent. If you’re a student moving to London and will be staying in a dormitory instead, be advised that even if there’s a communal television on your floor for all residents of that floor to view, you are still responsible for obtaining your own TV license if you watch programming inside your individual room.
You might be wondering, then, what is the license for? Well, a TV license basically pays for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) programming you watch or listen to, be it on your television, computer, or radio. On the television, BBC offers thirteen different stations plus additional content with the use of a red button on your remote. Such additional content can also be found online through your computer or portable devices (including mobile), and programming is available via BBC iPlayer. Finally, there are eighteen BBC radio stations offering a diverse range of international music, news, sports, and talk. The fee likewise covers cost of installation of TV receivers.
Dinner with friends the other night brought this topic to mind because we were raving about the high quality of a lot of BBC programming. The content is comprehensive, and the filming technology is cutting edge, as evidenced by shows like Planet Earth and Frozen Planet. Seriously, just to give an example, this time-lapse footage on the underwater “brinicle” is insane (and has nearly five million hits on YouTube to date)!
So, hopefully this helps tick off one more question that your international relocation to London has raised. Moral of the story: if you plan to watch television programming in the comforts of your London apartment, you’re going to have to register for a TV license.
Welcome back if you’re planning an international relocation to the UK and wondering where to stay before you officially move into your London apartment rental. In my previous two posts on the topic, I’ve been discussing how before you can actually live in London in a fixed location, you need to spend some time here while you look for said property. In Part 2 of this series, I listed off some value London hotels to consider if you only need a few days of temporary accommodation (which the London Relocation agency makes absolutely possible given their one-day guaranteed flat-finding service!)
You might, however, be considering a longer stay here before letting a long-term London apartment. Your London Relocation agent will help you find a London flat to rent in only one day, yes, but perhaps you’re also looking and/or interviewing for jobs in London. Or maybe you simply want to make a proper holiday of visiting the city in advance of your London move. In that case, here’s a few serviced apartment options that you can rent for one or more weeks:
And for even cheaper rates if, rather than a serviced apartment, you’re willing to rent a bedroom in a shared apartment, here are resources for searching London flat shares:
The obvious perq of renting a serviced apartment in London versus a hotel is having a kitchen, laundry facilities, and basically all the amenities of a London apartment that you’d actually live in long-term (and some are probably even better if they include housecleaning services!). If needing temporary housing for over a week, the cost might prove a better value than a hotel’s nightly rate. It’s up to you to gauge time frame and budget for your visit. These London apartments and hotels are also just good to know about for when you have visitors to put up after your relocation to London!
Hey there, Weekend Warriors! It’s another Sunday round-up of the monarchs that have shaped London, England’s history, a bit of cultural food-for-thought as you prepare your international relocation to London. Last week, we saw the restoration of the monarchy after two “terms” of Commonwealth rule under Oliver Cromwell and his son Richard Cromwell. Today, we’ll meet King Charles II, who finally assumes his rightful seat on the throne long after his father Charles I had been executed to make way for Commonwealth rule.
If you recall, civil war broke out in England under Charles I‘s reign, at which time Charles II was only twelve. Nonetheless, at age fourteen Charles II was already appointed as nominal commander in chief in western England. As tensions surrounding his father’s monarchical rule culminated, young Charles II was forced into exile on the European continent. It was in 1650, the year after his father’s execution, that Charles II struck a deal with the Scots to become King of Scotland, and he invaded England under this authority yet was defeated by Oliver Cromwell in 1651.
Having retreated back into exile, it is not until 1660 that Charles II is now invited to return to us in England and be crowned as King. King Charles II is rather lenient on those responsible for his father’s execution back in 1649—less than ten of the conspirators are executed. He also must exude a great degree of political tolerance considering that, though the citizenry is elated to have a monarch again, Parliament now assumes most of the control. Thus paves the way for a modern concept of government as the civil war factions that had emerged during Charles I’s reign ultimately evolve into political parties (the Cavaliers ultimately become the Tory Party and the Roundheads the Whig Party). Charles II’s tolerance extends into religious affairs as well, partially because of his own Catholic leanings.
King Charles II has a doozy of a first few years of rule. Contrary to the “Great” part of the nicknames given to a couple of them, the major events that transpire are really quite awful. 1665 is the Great Plague, and 1666 is the Great Fire. Then in 1667, England loses its war against the Dutch. See what I mean?
Join me next Sunday for the continuation of our exploration of King Charles II’s reign. And in the meantime, breath easy knowing that your London Relocation agent will ensure you reign victorious over what could otherwise be a dreaded London apartment search! It’ll be a great experience for you, and by “great,” I really mean it this time! No verbal irony.
Finding temporary accommodation for searching London apartments - London Relocation Services - Image via Wikipedia
Hope your weekend has been fun but also productive as you plan your relocation to London. As I mentioned in my previous post on finding London accommodation for before you actually move into your new London apartment, a lot comes down to timing your trip over to find London apartments to rent and how long you can afford to stay in temporary housing.
Well, obviously the next important consideration is where to stay, and while it’s essentially impossible to provide you an exhaustive list of all the London hotels available to you in this huge city, I thought I could at least give you a list of some good values (you know, in case you’re reluctant to go the Ritz Carlton or Dorchester route):
While Easy Hotel is available in a few different London locations (and Imperial London Hotels offer six different hotels in Bloomsbury that range in price), lest we forgot some of the bigger, well-known chains:
Stick with me for another follow-up post on London accommodation to consider if you’re interested in visiting London for more than a few days prior to your official international relocation.
Making your list and checking it twice before a relocation to London - London Relocation Services
So, you’ve just decided to make an international relocation to London! Awesome! Now what?! If you’re undergoing the international relocation process, you surely know by now that it’s one thing to decide to move to London and quite another to carry it out. The most obvious obstacle is procuring your UK visa, which goes hand-in-hand with finding a job in London or enrolling in a study abroad program. If you don’t accomplish that step, you’re not going anywhere.
However, when you do, the list of additional logistics then unfurls before you and starts to look like Santa’s miles-long list of good little boys and girls. Well, you’re trying to move to the British Isles, not the Island of Misfit Toys, so it’s not as easy as drifting over on an iceberg (not that that sounds very simple either…and by the way, how do you like my lame attempt to incorporate Christmas now that ’tis the season?). You’ve got to figure out your timing and be as strategic as possible with it. Unless, of course, money and time are not an issue and you can take off and jet over to London whenever you feel like it, staying where you want and when you want (in which case, I think I might hate you ).
What I’m talking about (finally getting around to it) is deciding whether you’ll be flying into London in advance of your official move to look for London apartments or if you’ll be purchasing that single one-way ticket and winging it from there. My husband and I had done the latter and ended up living out of hotels for three weeks! Not a blast, let me tell ya. Either way, you can at least trust that your London Relocation agent is going to show you all your viable London property options in a single day, which saves gobs of time; it makes it entirely feasible to just wait, if you wish, to look for London apartments when you’ve actually moved over (just be sure to arrange for your international movers to deliver your belongings at a future date, otherwise they can’t do it without a UK address). It also makes it feasible for you to just plan a weekend trip to London if you’re opting to flat search in advance of your relocation to London—the London Relocation agency can get clients into their new London apartment rental as soon as the day after an appointment, but they can also forecast out four to six weeks. So, that helps tremendously if time and money are not on your side, as it can be tough getting time off work (especially if you’re moving to London from the US, where average vacation time is much less than elsewhere in the world) and having to pay for days of accommodation.
I’ll follow up in a future post with a few places to check out if you’re in need of temporary accommodation during your relocation to London, whether just for a couple nights or a longer stay of one week or more. Just another thing to check off the list to make sure your London move experience is not naughty but nice!
It’s not always easy recreating Thanksgiving in the UK, but Americans relocating to London do what they can. It helps that London is so festive in many other ways in the autumn! So, to fellow American expats living in London, those about to make the international relocation to London from the US, and all the rest of you in my beloved home country – HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!
Swiping your swipe card for the chip-and-PIN after moving to London - London Relocation Services - Image via Wikipedia
If you’re an American moving to London and have visited here before, you’ve probably been asked to provide additional identification at some point when paying with debit or credit with your American swipe card. Or perhaps the vendor didn’t have the equipment to read a swipe card because the magnetic strip readers have been phased out.
That’s because many countries outside of the US use a smart chip technology in their cards that provides identification data and requires input of a PIN number for added security. Traditional swipe cards had become an increased security risk as signatures could be forged if the card is stolen. Identity thieves have evidently also created technologies that can read magnetic strips, which assists in cloning such cards.
Since making my own relocation to London, I have to say I’m a big fan of the point-of-service reader concept that you’ll see in restaurants. It’s similar to the readers you’ll see at store counters in which you insert your card (smart chip end-in) and enter your PIN on the keypad; however, it’s portable, so wait-staff bring it directly to your table. Having been a victim of credit card fraud before (when I trusted a shoe department employee to take my card and ring me up already at the register while I put my own shoes back on—he rang my new shoes up all right, just also made some purchases of his own with the information he stole from my swipe card), I like my credit and debit cards where I can see them. And I like that having to enter a PIN even for a credit card transaction gives me an added layer of security.
So once you’ve made your international relocation to London and set up your UK bank account with your London Relocation agent‘s help, get excited for when they issue your new smart chip technology cards. You can feel more secure and say See ya! to the swipe.
An international relocation to London is going to acquaint you with new avenues—there are life paths to consider professionally and personally, but also, quite literally, a labyrinth of streets to navigate! Getting to know different London neighborhoods as your London Relocation agent guides you from one London apartment rental to the next is a stellar way to start getting acquainted; the cumulative expertise at the London Relocation agency will exhaust the options for you. But after cutting to the chase of finding a London flat to rent, the time will come to step outside of it and wander around. From my personal experience, I find the best way to learn the streets is to get yourself properly lost!
It’s always tempting to stick to the main thoroughfares that you know in navigating around, but London is packed with darling surprises when you let yourself veer off the beaten path. Just this last weekend, my husband and I frolicked on over to the Hyde Park Winter Wonderland (I just blogged about this event recently—which runs through January—and I reiterate here that if you’re relocating to London this winter, it’s a must-see!). As was fully expected, it was an awesome time, which left us in high spirits and keen to take a new route home that might offer somewhere else fun to explore. Ducking into the side streets of the Knightsbridge/Belgravia area just off Hyde Park Corner, we found ourselves strolling down Wilton Place and then into the utterly cute mews of Kinnerton Street. We popped into the Wilton Arms for a pint and felt cozy and warm in very old-school and intimate British interior with its carved wood paneling, bookshelves, and classic fixtures and decor. Just down the street from there is the Nag’s Head, which it was too late for us to go inside, but it looked like a very eccentric, kitschy interior, which of course I adored at first sight; it seemed an establishment truly for the locals, so I’ll see how I fare there in future as an outsider Yankee.
From there, we meandered around Belgrave Mews, Motcomb Street, and Lowndes Square, past all sorts of nice boutiques, restaurants, and hands-down the poshest Waitrose grocery store I’ve ever seen in London—it looked like an upscale department store from the outside, spanning the full depth of a block. At this point, you’re approaching the ultra high-end shops of Sloane Street (which stretches between the shopping hot-spots of Knightsbridge and Sloane Square), but if you stay east of it and wander further south, you enter eerily quiet and still residential streets like Eaton Square. In this vicinity are some of the larger and more regal looking rows of white Victorian terraced houses you’ll see in London, with an almost imposing, embassy-like officialness to them even though they’re family homes (and huge ones at that of top-notch quality).
Even three years after my relocation to London from the US, I hadn’t seen most of these streets, sticking to the main drags of Knightsbridge and Sloane Street, as it were, that are crowded and lack a lot of soul in comparison. I recommend you yourself take a wander around this area—you just may fall in love with it and insist your London Relocation agent show where you can rent London apartments there!
High-end shopping vs. far-flung rubbish! - London Relocation Services - Image by Not forgotten via Flickr
A relocation to London UK will acquaint you with the odder corners of history for sure. This ancient city has hosted a quirky population in its day, and it never ceases to amuse me how these quirks are often responsible for some of its more charming features.
Last week, I started a series on London’s side street surprises; that is, relatively off-the-beaten-path pockets of the city where you can try to dodge the tourists. In my second post on this topic, I’d mentioned the Burlington Arcade just off Regent Street and how its origins were rather bizarre. Well, as promised, here’s a snippet on this interesting row of teeny Georgian-era shops (well preserved since their completion in 1819!), as related by Tom Quinn’s London’s Strangest Tales:
“Visitors often think the Georgian planners who built these little shops were simply building to make a profit. In fact they built the arcade to cover a narrow alley that ran alongside Burlington House, now the home of the Royal Academy but in the early nineteenth century still a private home. The owner of Burlington House was Lord George Cavendish, who had complained for years that while sitting in his garden he was constantly hit on the head by oyster shells, apple cores, old bottles and even an occasional dead cat. These unpleasant items were thrown over the wall between the garden and the lane which then existed at its side. Cavendish decided that a row of shops would put paid to the nuisance and so he had them built and the alleyway vanished forever.”
Oh, London…I love ya. So thanks to Lord Cavendish, those relocating to London today can still enjoy the tiny but high quality boutiques found within the arcade and feel like you’re stepping into the city’s past. And as you search for your own property to rent, you can feel confident that your London Relocation agent will avoid showing you any London apartments with gardens that serve as trash receptacles.
Richard Cromwell, Lord Protector - Image by lisby1 via Flickr
If you’re moving to London, it’s in the spirit of an international relocation to broaden your historical and cultural knowledge. That’s why we run our weekly Weekend Warrior Sunday series here, so you can already get acquainted with Britain’s past monarchs as you prepare for your London move. Last week, we finished reviewing the Commonwealth rule of Oliver Cromwell, England’s Lord Protector in place of the traditional monarchy. Dying of illness, Cromwell named his son Richard Cromwell as his heir.
Richard is actually Oliver’s third son, but the deaths of his older brothers have made him next in line. Previously a gentleman farmer, he inherits his father’s role as Chancellor of Oxford University and, thus introduced into public life, proceeds to become a member of the Council of State as well as House of Lords. Becoming Lord Protector of the Realm in 1658, Richard faces opposition from military leaders, and government structure fluctuates as pressures are placed on him. A Rump Parliament is reestablished in place of the Protectorate, then dissolved, then reinstated yet again—General Monck has led the charge on this and also reopens Parliament’s doors to members who had been driven out a decade earlier.
Monarchy is restored as the former (executed) King Charles I‘s son, Charles II, is invited to assume the throne as king in 1660, forcing Richard to abdicate. He settles for a long while in France under an assumed name. Whereas it sends Richard away, the restoration of the monarchy shockingly brings the deceased Oliver Cromwellback into the picture. In 1661, a mob raids Westminster Abbey to exhume Oliver Cromwell’s remains. Though Cromwell had lost his life to natural causes, his body is now hanged in Tyburn and decapitated as a symbolic posthumous execution. His head is mounted on a stake in front of Parliament while his body is tossed into an unmarked grave.
As for Richard, when permitted to reenter England without consequence in 1680, he continues to live a quiet, humble life of anonymity. He dies at the age of eighty-five in 1712.
Howdy there, Pilgrims! It’s time for another round-up of Thanksgiving dinners in London if you’re making an international relocation to London from the US in time for the holiday.
I’ve blogged before about how I, as a fellow American expat living in London, have been able to find the traditional fixin’s for a Thanksgiving meal (like Stove Top stuffing and pumpkin pie) at the South KensingtonPartridges in London (there’s another in Chelsea on the King’s Road, and the American Food Store is alternative located in Holland Park). That helped me out with my quick-n-dirty attempts at the feast when more formal meal plans had to be scrapped at the last-minute. It’s also tougher to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner given limited time constraints if you and your spouse or partner both have jobs in London, as we for obvious reasons don’t get the day off here in the UK. Unless you’re planning to use one of your vacation days to do it, that’ll be a real challenge to stuff the bird in the oven in time. Luckily, you’ll have Whole Foods at your disposal (the world’s largest one is located on London’s Kensington High Street), as they offer an American Thanksgiving menu that will prepare you entire meal, bodda-boom-bodda-bing.
If you’re not inclined to either cook or have to wash dishes, though, there are plenty of London venues that usually serve up a Thanksgiving feast or near-enough equivalent. So let’s gives thanks to the following if they’re continuing to do so this year (be sure to confirm with them in case they don’t specifically display their Thanksgiving menu on their website):
We welcome comments here if you know of any other restaurants hosting Thanksgiving in London this year! And even if you’re not relocating to London for Thanksgiving this year, at least you know that it does exist in London if you know where to find it. In the meantime, the London Relocation agency is thankful that you’re here checking out our site right now and would love to chat with you about finding your London apartment—a new home for spending the holidays in London.
If you’re relocating to London, you’ll find that it’s a massive city to navigate, and one of the fun challenges of it is trying to acquaint yourself with as many of its dynamic streets as possible. In my previous post, I just started a series on some of the delightful side streets in London not far at all from the more trafficked ones you’re likely to hit first.
As west London is a popular destination for tourists and North American expats in London alike, I’ve started with the London shopping mecca of Oxford and Regent streets. Last time, I mentioned the street network to the east of Regent Street, so now let’s skip on over to the west of it. A popular night-spot for drinks and dinner here is Heddon Street, so keep a careful eye out for this little alley between the shops along the main Regent Street thoroughfare—The Living Room, Ice Bar, and Strawberry Moons draw the dressy after-work crowd, and there’s some good casual Italian fare to be had in this little pocket as well. Running parallel to Heddon Street right to the west is Savile Row, famous for its high-end tailoring; it also used to be the location of The Beatles’ Apple studio. Wandering even a little further west of that brings you to the Burlington Arcade, one of the world’s first shopping malls that has rather bizarre origins…(perhaps I’ll write a post just on that next week).
In any case, another particular pocket I’ve become acquainted with that I find far more appealing than Oxford Street itself is if you walk east of Regent Street on Oxford and hang a left at Great Titchfield Street. You’ll ultimately stumble on a cute little nook of shops and restaurants (granted, predominantly chain ones, but good ones)—my personal favorite there is Pho, which serves Vietnamese cuisine and delicious weasel poop coffee (you heard me). Berners Street just a couple streets down from there is also a nice row of restaurants—try Stef’s if you like Italian. Alternatively, if you walk west of Regent Street on Oxford, escape the mania near Bond Street by ducking north of Oxford Street into St. Christopher Place, a super cute and cozy nest of restaurants and bars where you’ll still encounter plenty of pedestrians but can avoid the street traffic.
Rest assured, as we enter the holiday season, Oxford and Regent Street are going to become increasingly insane with Christmas shoppers. Definitely do check them out for their spectacular Christmas light displays, but try to catch a breather by ducking down an alleyway or two—they’re nothing to shy away from. If you’re interested in learning more about this particular area of London as you seek to rent a London apartment, just ask your London Relocation agent for more details about residences and amenities nearby.
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