I am living in an apartment in the east of London. The neighborhood is in between The City of London and Whitechapel, part of the Tower Hamlets postal code and technically called Aldgate. The apartment building itself is inconspicuous, sitting in a street that contains a pub, a grocery store, other businesses, and other apartment buildings as well. My apartment itself is a great size. We have a kitchen, living room, and dining area that is all open. There are three bedrooms and three bathrooms, as the apartment fits seven students. A common feature in European bathrooms is heated towel racks, which are a GAME CHANGER! I have one roommate, another room fits two students, and the last room fits three students. One major challenge has been when everyone wants to cook dinner at the same time, there is simply no room for seven people to be in the kitchen area all at once. Also, when living with this many people, keeping the kitchen clean is quite a task. We have a weekly cleaning service, but the kitchen gets filthy after a few days due to so much use. It feels like every few days we have to do a deep clean of the kitchen in order to keep it sanitary. Four of my roommates are fellow Pitt students, which makes living together great. We all became great friends, traveling together and going out on the weekends together. Another challenge about apartments in London is that most do not have air conditioning. For the first few months this was not an issue, as it was winter. During these last two months, our apartment can get quite warm. We have large windows in the living room area where the sun would shine in, making the apartment very warm in the afternoons. The size of appliances such as the stove and refrigerator are also smaller in London, so I often shopped for my meals the day I was planning to cook them. This was so easy to do, however, because one of England’s main grocery stores, Sainsburys, had a location right up the street from our apartment. While it was a smaller version of a large grocery store, it contained everything from fresh produce, frozen foods, packaged foods, meats, and alcohol. Having this store right up the street really makes shopping for food convenient. The thing I loved most about the apartment was the location. We are right in between east and central London, with a tube stop a mere five-minute walk away (the tube is London’s underground transportation). From here we can get to almost any place in the city we want, either directly from this station or changing trains at another station. There are also tons of restaurants and coffee shops within walking distance, making spontaneous plans a major possibility!
