Deciding where to live
It’s been over a month since we were in England on our practice trip. Our “let’s test the waters, make sure it fits” trip. And it was super helpful! I’d never been to either of the cities on our shortlist: Leamington Spa and Stratford-upon-Avon.
First, we spent a week in Leamington staying at an airbnb downtown. It was a big house that was split into flats, and it made me realize we are not meant for apartment living. Yikes, our toddler makes a lot of noise! But Leamington was great. It had everything Google said — wide boulevards and beautiful architecture and some nice high streets with cute cafes and boutiques. We hit up all the parks, of course, and the big gardens that run along the riverfront. It was all really charming and just kind of a shrug, like, yeah, this’ll do. This isn’t bad at all. We narrowed in on Milverton, a little to the west of the city center, where it’s green and feels more spacious. And it looks like there are some nice spots in Lillington, which feels a little more urban and central. South of the river felt too quiet and suburban, which was a shame since that’s where the houses are more affordable.
Next we went to Stratford. Everyone kept warning us about the tourists, and it’s sort of true but not really that bad. The town center has lots of people walking around, and there’s a pedestrianized boulevard that’s full of cafes and Shakespeare’s birthplace. We stayed near Anne Hathaway’s cottage and there were tour buses and open-top buses driving by frequently. But it didn’t feel overwhelming. It wasn’t like walking down Oxford Street or the South Bank in London where you feel like you can’t even move for all the people. However, we were in the Shottery and it definitely had an older vibe. There seemed to be lots of grumpy old rich people, which isn’t really our scene.
In Stratford, my husband stopped into an estate agents to ask about house rentals and how that would work for us. He spoke to one woman who was super helpful! She said in our situation, since we won’t have recent UK credit history, we’d likely need to put down six months’ or a year's rent. Her agency, Belvoir, wouldn’t work with us at all, but there are others who would. She also said that places won’t rent to you without you seeing it in person, so we’ll have to figure something out where we do another trip in the spring to look for rentals and hopefully get lucky finding a nice property then and there. I don’t really know what we’ll do if we can’t find a place before we move — it doesn’t seem logistically feasible so we’ll just have to figure it out.
So that was our trip! We settled on Leamington Spa, and it feels good to have a destination, but it’s also opened up a whole other can of worms about how to secure a rental before we move. We’ll see!
