Lifestyle tips

Ohhhhh that's a really hard question to answer.

London is like a series of little villages all linked together. So each individual area will have its own bars/restaurants/shops. It depends on your budget for rent!

Unless you've got an unlimited budget you probably won't want to live bang in the centre. Most affordable places probably start in Zone 2 (see an underground map for zones). The further out you go, the cheaper, but the longer the travelling time to get into the centre of town.

People who come here for the first time tend to find it really frustrating that most journeys in London from one area to another on public transport take at least 45mins to an hour or more! So if you're going to be working/studying it's a good idea to live locally to where you've got to be each day unless you want to spend hours commuting.

From having lived in the following places I can say you'd find affordable rents, lots of lively shops, bars and good places to eat: Bermondsey, Brixton, Clapham, Waterloo. Those are all in South London and it would take you 30-45 mins by tube or bus from each to get to Oxford Street (West End/Central London) where there's loads of clothes shopping.

I'm sure other people will have recommendations for areas in North/East/West London too.

If you're new to London it's often helpful to find somewhere to live that's near to a tube (underground) line. I prefer buses myself, but for newcomers it's easier to navigate this huge city by reference to tube stops.

If you have a look on the Events forum, you'll see that there are BBW club nights (BGP, Indulge) and FF-member-organised pub meet-ups quite often in London. These tend to be central London so that people from all areas can access them reasonably easily.

If you look on the Large Lifestyle forum, WannabePrincess (Debz) has posted a thread about places to buy Plus-Size clothes. There are fewer shops in the UK than in the USA stocking bigger sizes so a lot of us tend to buy online. There are high-street (chain store) shops for big girls here but I can't think of any particular area apart from the West End of London which has many of them together in one place.

Hope that helps & welcome to London in advance!