Planning trip to London this Summer

Look at the tube map, and take it from there.  The further out you go from town, the cheaper it will be.  I'm up in Finchley, on the Northern Line, and have lived near Kingston before - both these areas are quite suburban but easily commutable.

A shared flat will be just like a regular flat.  You won't find that each romm has a door to the kitchen.

Vicky

Kilburn/Kilburn Park/West Hampstead is pretty cheap and a good location, not far from central London and good transport links.

It's turning out harder to find a place than we thought. Most end up being agencies and don't want to do 1 month leases. A lot of people also don't respond. We've been mostly using gumtree and craigslist.

You might have to stay in a hostel or a B&B instead.  It will be more expensive.  Have you looked on student sites?  I know lots of Uni students leave London for the summer and have to sublet their rooms.  Maybe that is an option?

I know you're primarily interested in London, and who could blame you? It's a fabulous town.

Have you considered staying in Brighton? It's a beautiful seaside town, it isn't horribly far from London, and they have a decent selection of hostiles. It has a day life, a night life and often times concerts and festivals are held there in the summer, so you'd be in the middle of the action. It has its own train station in the middle of the city that you could get to by foot. I also don't think it'll be nearly as expensive as staying in London.

I just think if living in England is truly your passion, staying in London the entire time and being on "tourist mode" for a month isn't going to give you any insight to what it's like to live here.

I live two miles from Gatwick airport, and often see planes flying over our house. Nearby we have Arundel (gorgeous little town with a castle well worth seeing), Hever Castle, Hampton Court, Leeds Castle, various medieval summer festivals all within an hour's travel from our place.

Contemplate Brighton and maybe book a London hotel via priceline for a couple of long weekends. Then you'd probably get to see more of England that way.

Our primary reason for not wanting to stay in hostels is to save money on food from buying groceries. I suppose we'd save that in turn from the lower cost of hostels, but it'd probably equal out and obviously we'd prefer our own little place.

We want to go to London because that's where we want to live. I think if we stay in our own place, buy groceries/cook/travel around the tube, we won't exactly be on tourist mode and will get a somewhat decent idea of what it's like to live in London. I'd like to see Brighton, but it's not our main desire for living so I really want to make London work. I suppose we have another 3 months to find a place so it's not so dire yet. But we have the plane tickets bought so either way we are there from July 7th to Aug 7th! Strangely exciting knowing we have the plane tickets and not the accomodations lol.

If anybody knows anyone that has an investor flat that they let out or even somebody that has an extra bedroom w/ bathroom and wants to make some extra money this summer, let us know! We are responsible, don't really drink at all, well kept, and polite!

Yes, but in previous posts you mentioned you'd consider staying in another area of the UK (Remember when you rejected Glasgow?).

When you say you want to stay in London, do you mean in a hotel close to the British Museum (for example) or in a London borough far away for you to have to take a train or a bus into the heart of the city each and every day?

Staying in London for a month to see the sites is a wonderful idea. Contemplating living in London's business district on a limit budget is probably going to be unlikely for you. If you lived in England, you may have to do what the rest of us do, and live right on the outside of the city.

I'd love to live in the heart of Tokyo, but it's unlikely I'm ever going to afford to do so unless I luck out at the lottery or Gala bingo (not that I have eve played  ).

Hostels will have their own kitchens, so you can cook and judge your finances accordingly.

When are your dates again?  You might want to post on gumtree rather than just looking.  You may find that there are people left with a vacancy for a month between tenants who would be happy to have you there.

Vicky

Hostels will have their own kitchens, so you can cook and judge your finances accordingly.

This is what my parents like to do when they stay in hostels - I know that nowadays some hostels do offer evening meals for an extra cost, but most should have self catering facilities. Have a look at http://www.yha.org.uk/ for information about the hostels. Doing a quick search for London hostels, they seem to start at about £20 per person per night, which seems fairly expensive, considering that in other parts of the country, you'd be looking at about £10-20 per person per night.

http://www.cheaperthanhotels.co.uk might help.

Vicky

My idea of a "city" is pretty big because I live in Phoenix. Technically you could drive from one end of what could be considered Phoenix for an hour in the opposite direction and still be in what could be considered Phoenix. Yet there are dozens of sub-cities within Phoenix, I assume that's what Hammer and Shepherd's Bush are within London? Of course I don't want to be 45-60 minutes away from the center, but I realize the Financial District of London (Zone 1?) is not realistic and super expensive. We were going for zone 3 or 4. Any information on typically how far one zone is from the next? From what I've been seeing we can get a moderate place to stay for 150GBP/wk, totaling 600GBP for the month. If we both stayed in hostels @ 20GBP/night, it'd be costing double. We'll keep looking and posting, our dates are July 7th - Aug 7th. Our main objective is to stay somewhere where we would actually be realistically living though. How far away is Brighton from the center of London?

Look at tfl journey planner for journey times.

I live in zone 4.  It takes me nearly as long for me to get from my house (about an house) to Victoria as it takes to get from Brighton to Victoria!  However, it costs quite a bit less.

Vicky

A fast train from Crawley to London is about 50 minutes. Fast train meaning during the day with fewer stops (not like a Gatwick Express) Brighton is further south, so I can't give you a precise timetable.

There's just much more to do in Brighton than Crawley, that's why I mentioned it.

An average house in Copthorne, where we live, costs around $2100 - $3000 USD a month to rent. It's a smallish three bedroom house. Copthorne doesn't have its own train station, and that aspect alone makes it cheaper to rent here.

If you are using this trip as a bit of a test run, you may want to forecast your future earning potential and do some soul searching on how small of a place you can live in. That'll help you to determine how much of a realistic goal living in London will be for you.

Realistically, if she is going to be working in London, living anywhere else won't work, as the trains are too expensive.

Vicky

I've just had a look on Gumtree, and there are loads of place, but none yet for the summer.  I think that you are looking to early.  I'd say budget for a hostel for the first week and that will leave you time to find a short term lease.  These things often don't show up until the week before they are available.

Vicky