Covent Garden WC2E, from the opera house to the Strand: an escort to your hotel room

Six hotels from Bow Street to the river

These are landmarks and no more than that. There is no arrangement between the desk and any of them, and she arrives the way your guest would, through the front door.

The Savoy on the Strand, WC2R 0EZ, whose short private approach, Savoy Court, is the one road in Britain where traffic keeps to the right. One Aldwych, WC2B 4BZ, in a 1907 newspaper building on the corner of the Aldwych crescent. St Martins Lane, WC2N 4HX, behind a glass front that makes the lobby look like a stage set. NoMad London, WC2E 7AW, in the former Bow Street magistrates' court, directly opposite the opera house. The Resident Covent Garden, a small hotel on the western side of the district. Covent Garden Hotel, WC2H 9HB, on Monmouth Street near Seven Dials, with a drawing room on the first floor.

Serviced apartments above the shops of Long Acre and the flats around Drury Lane are visited the same way: the address, the flat number, your full name.

The nearest platforms

Covent Garden station is 1 minute from the piazza and has no escalators at all: lifts, or a spiral of 193 steps that nobody climbs twice. Leicester Square takes about 4 minutes from Long Acre and the St Martins Lane side. For the Strand hotels, Charing Cross, with its main line trains as well as the Tube, is about 6 minutes along.

In the evening she arrives by car. Every journey inside Zone 1 is folded into the fee, so the station only matters if you plan to walk to dinner.

What a car can reach in WC2E

The piazza itself is closed to traffic, as are several of the lanes around it, so for the market side hotels her car pulls up on whichever street is open and she covers the final stretch on foot. The Strand hotels are simpler: the Savoy and One Aldwych both have a forecourt or a door onto a main road. The desk allows for the difference when it gives you a time.

Once Henrietta has checked your full name against the hotel and room you give, one time only on WhatsApp, a Covent Garden room is usually reached within the hour. She collects the fee from you herself when she arrives, and the minute the desk gives you is the minute it plans around.

Opera, ballet and the late table

The opera house sets the rhythm of this district. A long opera can run until well past eleven, a ballet nearer ten, and the restaurants around Maiden Lane and Henrietta Street plan their evenings around both. Rules, on Maiden Lane, is the oldest restaurant in London and is well used to late parties arriving in evening dress. Most guests who book here want company for exactly that: the performance, or the supper after it, or both.

For a performance and supper together, book the four hour dinner length, £900, and send the curtain time. For supper alone, two hours at £500 is usually enough.

Who writes from Covent Garden rooms

Opera and ballet visitors staying a night or two at the Strand hotels. Lawyers in town for a case at the Royal Courts of Justice, a few minutes east along the Strand. Guests who took a room at NoMad or St Martins Lane for a weekend of theatre and would like one of those evenings in company. And residents of the flats above Long Acre, who simply prefer to stay in.

An opera night, sketched

Curtain up at half past seven. A guest at One Aldwych books four hours from seven and meets his companion in the lobby that curves with the Aldwych. They walk the few minutes to Bow Street for a glass under the iron and glass of the Paul Hamlyn Hall before the bell. The final bows come at ten. Supper is a corner table at Rules, a short walk away, and at eleven she says goodnight at the hotel door.

Based in WC2E

Karolina, Nancy and Tina have their home district in Covent Garden, which keeps a late request here short. Anyone else on the available list can be booked for WC2E as well, at the same tariff, so choose the woman who suits the evening and let the desk handle the journey.

Next door to Covent Garden

West across Charing Cross Road, Soho runs later and louder. East along the Strand and Fleet Street, the City begins at Temple Bar. Over Waterloo Bridge and along the river, the hotels around London Bridge gather under the Shard. And a few minutes past Leicester Square, Mayfair takes over.