Student friendly London

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Student friendly London

Roz Wilson gives us tips on living the high life on a low budget.

London is now officially the second most expensive city on the world, beaten only by Moscow. If you’ve recently ventured inside the M25 to study, the shock of having to hand over more than £10 for two alcoholic beverages is enough to make even the most committed drinker consider going teetotal. However, before you arrange a swift transfer to a university up north, pause to consider that London was also recently named the second coolest city in the world (by some company who actually pay people to decide What Is Cool and What Isn’t Cool – now there’s a job we want to have). Anyway, with a little insider knowledge you can enjoy the best this damn cool city has to offer without having to pawn your entire worldly possessions. We have our fair share of cheapskates here at The End, so we thought we’d share some of our skankiest tips on how to spend your weekend living the high life on a low budget.

Saturday

10am - See London
Yeah we know you’re not a tourist, but heck – London’s one of the world’s hottest tourist destinations in the world, you don’t want to walk around staring at the pavement for 3 years. Official bus tours cost almost £20 - instead, just hop on the number 15 bus. OK, so it may not have an open top, but it will probably be raining anyway, and it goes round loads of the top tourist sites – St Paul’s Cathedral, Trafalgar Square, The Tower of London, The Royal Courts of Justice , Monument. Or sight-see Canary Wharf and the East End by taking the DLR from Bank to Greenwich, via Canary Wharf. It's like a slow rollercoaster with great views! Once at Greenwich turn into Romney Road and buy noodles from super cheap famous diner Noodle Time. Lovely.

12pm - Get some threads
Forget Spitalfields and Camden and stick to the old school markets – if you want real bargains head to the East End's Roman Road on a Saturday (or Petticoat Lane on a Sunday). You’ll have to rummage through the tat to find the gems, but that’s half the fun, innit?

2pm - Get a mullet
Have you ever noticed that when you walk down New Oxford Street there’s usually a gaggle of hip young things with extraordinarily good hair hanging around? A conspiracy to make you feel less stylish? No, you’ve just walked past the Tony & Guy training academy. Walk past enough times and one of them will hopefully accost you and offer you a free haircut. Whether you take this as a compliment to your excellent taste, or a sign they think your hair is so bad that people have to avert their eyes when they walk past, is up to you – but at the end of the day, it’s a free haircut, so who cares? You can also take the more orthodox route of phoning up and booking yourself in, still for free.

5pm - Mosh
More and more shops have started staging free gigs in the afternoon where you can see massive bands for nowt, as long as you are prepared to fight past a plethora of emo / nu-rave 14 year olds clutching their My Chemical Romance / Klaxons CD’s. Try Rough Trade, HMV and Virgin, who all host regular free live gigs – acts such as The Gossip and Kasabian have played HMV recently. Apple sometimes hold free gigs in their Regent Street store, and even Topshop’s flagship shop on Oxford Street has been known to host bands. Keep an eye on listings or sign up to the shops’ newsletters to find out what’s coming up – and turn up early!

7pm - Get drunk
Ahhh – back to the problem of drinking. At the end of the day, if you want to make the most of London’s vibrant bar and club scene, eventually you’re just going to have to dig deep and accept that going out in London is expensive, otherwise you will miss out on so much that this great city has to offer. Don’t worry, after a while paying £6 for a G&T will seem as normal as elbowing people out of the way on the tube. However, for those last-week-before-student-loan moments, there are a few establishments that will see you through. Try any of the Samuel Smiths chain of pubs, such as the John Snow on Broadwick Street and The Crown on New Oxford Street, where you can get a pint for less than £2.

9pm – Fill your belly
Head to Kingsland Road for Vietnamese - ridiculously cheap, amazing food, and you can bring your own booze.

11pm - Dance
Daft Punk were right – we just want to celebrate and dance for free. But how? Get a job as flyer person. Not only will you get into the club you work for free, but you’ll often get into other clubs for free as well - keep an eye on the jobs section of The End website.

Sunday

11am - Eat breakfast
The two bagel shops on the top of Brick Lane are legendary. They NEVER close, and you can get a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel for £1.50. Great whether you’ve just got up, or haven’t been to bed yet (dirty stop-out).

12pm - Buy random tat at Brick Lane Market
Well – not a market as such, more a bunch of people sitting on the pavement selling what appears to be the contents of their Aunt Mildred’s attic. Want to buy an odd shoe, a purple jumper or a home-recorded Fleetwood Mac cassette tape? Want to buy a t-shirt for a £1? No? But it’s so cheap! An excellent way to scratch the shopping itch and get rid of your small change.

2pm - Watch a film
Going to the cinema in London will cost you about £7, or closer to £12 in central London. There is one glistening hope for affordable cinema in Soho, however. A yearly membership to The Prince Charles Cinema, just off Leicester Square, costs a measly £9 a year, and allows you to see films for as little as £1.50 – considerably cheaper than renting a DVD. They even host (get this) regular sing along shows, which are a little more pricey, but you get to dress up and belt your heart out to The Sound of Music. Genius. If alternative film is more your bag, head along to Rock n Roll Cinema's monthly Sundays at 93 Feet East (winter only - in summer we are all too busy getting sloshed in beer gardens) or Short and Sweet every Tuesday at AKA (which is free!)

5pm - Get cheap scran
The Stockpot group of restaurants serve proper old fashioned comfort food that costs less than a Pret sandwich – and they’re all in great locations too. Eat out in Soho or Chelsea for less than a fiver? Bargin!

7pm - Get cultured
The price of tickets to see shows in London’s West End can make you want to strangle Joseph and his bloody technicolour dreamcoat. Happily, there are ways of being a culture vulture on the cheap – and it doesn’t necessarily involve sitting in a half empty theatre watching an obscure German monologue that the promoters practically paid you to come and see. The Globe Theatre has 700 £5 standing tickets for every show, and Travelex has a deal with the National Theatre offering hundreds of seats for a tenner. Head to Leicester Sqaure's ticket office after 5pm got half price on many theatres, or if you’re prepared to squint at the stage from high up, you can get tickets to shows at The Royal Opera House for less than £10. Alternatively, head down to Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park and engage in heated topical debate (i.e. listen to mad people shouting at each other) for zero pence.

10pm – Celebrate the best day of the week
Sundays win over Saturdays every time for cheapness, atmosphere and just generally the fact that you know you shouldn’t really be out. London is the epicenter of Sunday night fun – it would take 10 pages to tell you all the good stuff out there, but here’s a few suggestions to get you started. The uber-chic Notting Hill cocktail bar The Lonsdale is currently running free cocktails for an hour on Sunday nights - drink your fill and then stay for the party. On the East side you’re spoilt for choice – get involved in cheap BBQ food from Café 1001 or 93 Feet East. If it’s big DJ’s you’re after, you can see the same names on a Sunday for less than half the price that you’d pay on a Saturday. Try Plastic People or T-Bar in Shoreditch, seasonal super party secretsundaze, our very own Superfreq at The End, or the Notting Hill Arts Club.