Central London

And they bite quite hard. You may own a gorgeous studio in zone one that looks cool but can barely hold your shoes inside. The ad will say that there will be a vintage staircase or some cool stuff like that in your flat, but in reality, it will the only way for you to reach your honorary square feet at the attic while the word “vintage” itself usually stands for something old and needing repairs. A studio like that will cost you anything from 750L to a million.

What can you get for the same money elsewhere?

750K will get you a lovely two-bedroom flat in the second zone. Your flat will be located on a Victorian terrace, you will enjoy a large kitchen fit for cooking rather than simply storing empty pizza boxes, the windows will be as large as life and the flat itself will be as roomy. Alternatively, you could go for an entire three-bedroom house in zone 5 – a place where you can start a family and raise wonderful children.

Zone 1 has it all – museums, galleries, theaters, restaurants, and pubs. But do you know who goes to all of those places? People. A lot of people. From locals to tourists – each and every soul wishes to get a slice of the London pie in zone one. Forget about peace and silence, learn to enjoy wreckage and other people’s ways of having fun and you’ll be peach perfect.

Frankly, there are many more upsides than downsides to living in zone 1. Yes, it may be a bit too overcrowded or noisy, but the game is totally worth the effort once you think about how you don’t need to spend countless hours commuting to work or school on a daily basis.

All of the coolest places I’ve mentioned before like the galleries, the museums, the pubs, and the restaurants are at a hand’s reach. Countless events are taking place in zone 1 from dentistry seminars to Comic-Cons to wine degustation shows. You will get to experience life in the Big City like never before. If someone were to ask me what the most priceless thing in life is, I’d say that this is it. It really is, at least for me.

It matters little if you’ve just moved in – you are now a zone 1 dweller. You will need to sit down with Google Maps in front of you, study the area you stay at, learn about a few cool places and you are all set. Now, when the next person will ask you about getting from point A to point B you would say something like, “Kind sir, you’ll need to take a left here and then turn right, but if I were you, I’d choose bub A over pub B. The drinks there are just too exquisite to miss out on”. That feeling when you know your way around the city, especially the part that goes after “but if I were you” – mmm, priceless!

It’s not as bad as I thought. You live in the very heart of London. There’s not much in this world that you need and that’s simply amazing. But what if you do? What if there is a need in your heart for something very specific that lies outside the rational length of a lazy stroll?

London is big, you know, really big. Especially to someone from zone 1 who is used to having everything at his or her fingertips at all times. Well, you could use a car and drive, says someone who doesn’t know London very well. The thing is that with a behemoth of a city as large as the Big Smoke, a car will only slow you down in traffic jams.

An Oyster card linked to the railcards that you own would be the most rational solution. You will pay less for your travels, you will have access to amazing discounts and, all in all, you will pay a small fortune given that I have an amazing pro tip for you: use your Oyster card combo to shop outside of zone 1. Sure, they say that the entirety of London is expensive, but the prices here and the prices there are heaven and hell in comparison.