To slum or not to slum

Zach and I moved into a great flat on the East side of London last month. Our area is called Shoreditch and is full of muscians, artists, and a sprinkling of young professionals. It offers great pubs, clubs, and some descent restaurants. Our flat itself is AMAZING. I'm in love with it. It's a spacious two bedroom, two bathroom, ultra modern, brand new place. The down side of our hood is when all of these clubs close at 6 am and all the vampires come crawling out of their holes flying high on drugs and booze. You are then challenge to not step on broken glass or fresh vomit. Or even worse, chased by a drugged out lunatic as my neighbor experienced one morning. We are not the "clubbing" kind in fact we have talking about starting our family later on this year and buying a home. So we have come to the conclusion that it's time to move before we invest in furniture. That's another thing! Buying furniture in London is an absolute nightmare. First off, it's so expensive, then if your lucky enough to find something that you like and is descently priced it's not available. And when I say unavailable I mean just that. I was informed that the couch I wanted will not be available until mid Nov. then at that time I can actually order it. Once you order the couch it takes another 3 to 4 weeks for delivery. I forget that I'm living on an island and things are imported here. You see, as Americans we don't know the meaning of wait. If you want something, it's available right then and there. You can buy a sofa and take a nap on it later on the same day. My Canadian neighbor and I had a chat about this whole furniture ordeal yesterday. She just bought a "new" bed and it finally arrived after 3 weeks. You can imagine her horror when she discovered that it smelled as if someone had died in it. Her exact words. So she is back to using her air mattress until her repalcement bed is sent out in approx., you guessed it, 3 weeks. I guess it's a blessing that we haven't been able to buy furniture since we will be moving. Now we know why so many flats come furnished! So the area we want to live in now is actually an area that we checked out initially but deemed it yuppyish. We welcome Angel / Islington (our targeted neighborhood) with open arms. Till then we will cherish our beautiful, empty, spacious flat. We've had many nice meals on the floor.