Where to Live in London

Hi,
I am moving to London with a friend in the fall and we are feeling really overwhlemed in terms of where we should look for housing and the rent prices. We don't plan on actually looking for a flat until we are there, but we want to have an idea of areas to look etc.
We are in our early/mid 20s and are going to be teaching while in London. We are wanting to be somewhere young, hip, fun, safe and relatively reasonable in terms of rent prices. We will be making roughly 500 pounds/week and are more looking to have as fun/exciting an experience as possible by living in London for a year oppose to saving lots of money to return home with.
ANY advice about neighbourhoods etc. would be really appreciated!

Do you know which area of London you will be working in? I could give you some recommendations but this would be much easier having a vague idea of where you will be travelling for work. I've learned that it's important to live a reasonable distance from your job otherwise you'll spend a lot of miserable hours every day standing body-to-smelly-body on the underground.

Good point. Actually, we will be supply teaching (at least to start), so we can be all over (in 23 of the boroughs). I know that is a huge area, and once we are there we will likely be able to have more of concentration in certain areas. Being near a subway station that is on a line that has a lot of connections/easy to get all over would be ideal.

My criteria for living in London is to be on a good tube line. Which I think are the central, Piccadilly, Northern north of the river as I find south of the river too congested). As well the Jubilee line is a good one but over the past 4 years it has been closed on weekends a lot for engineering works, not sure what the plans are for the next while though.

Over the 4 years I've been here I have lived in Sheppard's Bush, Notting Hill, Camden Town and now Bow/Mile End in east London.

If you have questions on specific areas let me know.

Michelle
http://www.bluenosegirl.com

I just spent 9 days in London with a friend who lives there. He lives in Clapham Junction - perfect borough for 20-35 professionals. Rent usually is £500-£650/month and if you are working in central London, you will need a zone 1-2 card (£108-ish/month) but you can use the rail, tube and bus services