London is a mighty monster, but a magnificent one for sure!
Before we moved here in 2018, we had visited the city a number of times as tourists and completely fell in love with it. We were quite young at that time and moved there specifically to go to University, but there is a great difference between visiting London and actually living in it. Now, four years later and hopefully a bit wiser – we have battled the pandemic, Brexit and the everchanging political structure in this country – London has become a part of us as we have of the city. We’d love to share some of our ups and downs with you here!
The Prices
There’s no way of avoiding this topic, and no way to sugarcoat it either. London IS extremely expensive? Why? Probably because of a lot of complicated and intricate factors contributing to it, but we can imagine the high number of tourists, strong financial sector here, attractive job opportunities and beauty of the city sure help.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways around the big price tags. Usually shops and restaurants outside of the centre are more affordable and also less busy. Cheap pubs, especially the chain Wetherspoons, provide an alternative to some of the expensive independent pubs (BUT we would encourage you to always avoid chains in favour of local and individually-owned pubs for sure, even though they might be slightly pricier). There’s always deals for 2 for 1 meals, discounts or Happy Hours somewhere so we suggest you take a look online to see if there are any offers available. If you are a student the apps Student Beans and Unidays are also great for great deals on a wide variety of food and shopping options. For everyone else Groupon offers the non-student alternative.
