When I first moved to London, it was overwhelming trying to find a place to live.
I saw 20+ flats in one day, put in two offers the next day and ended up in Notting Hill.
Little did I know how much I would come to love my little neighborhood.
While London is a huge metropolis, it's broken down into smaller boroughs with their own unique personalities and communities. From arty, hipster communities in Shoreditch, to the posher neighborhoods of Chelsea, everyone has an identity that I didn't know about when I moved to London. Yet somehow, I stumbled upon the gold of Notting Hill.
While most Americans know the neighborhood because of the movie by the same name, it's not necessarily a hugely popular expat community (at least the part that I live in, and especially compared to St John's Wood and Chelsea). We've got everything from Portobello Road and Carnival, to some of the best restaurants in London (including the world famed Ledbury), crammed into little roads lined with your typical yet beautiful London buildings covered in ivy, wisteria and even little monkeys in the case of Lancaster Road.
I've spent so many afternoons and evenings wandering the streets, familiarising myself with its nooks and crannies yet there is still so much to discover as the neighborhood continues to change.
Yet, after 2 years in Notting Hill, we've decided it's time for a change. It's not quite Istanbul to London, but it is our own little shaking up of our world in London. We'll be moving to Chiswick in a few weeks. The main reason is to get Paul closer to work, but I'm also excited to see if I can love a new part of London as much as I love my current neighborhood. I'm a bit apprehensive Chiswick may not live up to my exceedingly high expectations after our first London flat, but we're going to give it a go. With a beautiful high street, parks and the Thames nearby, I'm hoping we'll fall in love with London all over again.
So, with only a few weeks left a resident of my beloved Notting Hill, I wanted to finally take some time to share with a few of my favourite parts of it.
This is a great bblog
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