Escorts in Covent Garden, WC2E: who is close, and how soon
Covent Garden is a small postcode with an unusually high number of very good, very narrow rooms. Twenty four seats around a counter in Neal's Yard. Booths and mirrors on Russell Street. A panelled alley off St Martin's Lane where half the room has just come out of a theatre. Very little here involves sitting across three feet of linen from somebody, and that shapes an evening more than most people expect.
This page is about those rooms and the short distances between them. WC2E is roughly eight minutes across, which means the hotel, the table and the theatre are all within a walk. Below: where the counters and booths are, the hotels with their postcodes, the three stations, and who lives in the district. Figures are on the rates page.
On the ground
Covent Garden in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameWC2R 0EZ, WC2B 4BZ, WC2N 4HX, WC2E 7AW, WC2H 9HB.
Nearest stations
Walking timeCovent Garden, 1 minute. Leicester Square, 4 minutes. Charing Cross, 6 minutes.
Getting there
WC2ETravel is included across Zones 1 and 2, and counted from the moment the hour is set rather than from when she leaves.
On the board
Nearest prints to Covent Garden
Who works here
On the board in Covent Garden
Karolina, Nancy and Tina give Covent Garden as the zone they work most, and the eight prints above are the nearest on the board tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
Counters, booths and why they work
A counter seat puts two people shoulder to shoulder facing the same way, with a kitchen in front of them and something to look at when neither of you is talking. For a first evening it removes the interview quality that a wide table can create. Neal's Yard has the best known of them, a couple of dozen seats with no reservations after a certain hour, and there are more scattered through the streets towards Seven Dials.
Booths do a similar job from the opposite direction. The big brasserie on Russell Street is loud, mirrored and thoroughly enjoyable, and a booth in it is private in the way a busy room can be, which a quiet room never is. Near St Martin's Lane the alley restaurants are panelled, small and full of people who have just watched the same thing you did.
Note 03
Everything inside eight minutes
WC2E is compact to the point of being convenient. From the middle of the Piazza to the Strand is six minutes, to Seven Dials five, to most of the theatres under eight. That means an evening here needs no cars between stops, which is worth more on a wet Tuesday than any amount of planning.
The other consequence is timing. If your table is at half past nine you do not need to leave your hotel at nine, and the office will say so rather than quietly booking you a longer evening. Two hours at £500 covers a table and a walk through the Piazza afterwards. Three hours at £700 is the sensible shape if there is a curtain involved.
Note 04
The hotels, and where the boundary falls
One hotel sits opposite the opera house at WC2E 7AW and another is a few minutes north at WC2H 9HB. WC2N 4HX is on the theatre side, and the smallest of them is in the middle of the district. Just outside WC2E, WC2R 0EZ stands on the Strand and WC2B 4BZ on the Aldwych curve, both of them a short walk down from the Piazza.
They are here as landmarks and nothing else. No hotel in WC2 has any arrangement with this office, nothing is sent ahead and no front desk is asked for anything. The big Strand hotels have busy lobbies at theatre turnout time, so if you would rather she came straight up, tell the office and that is what happens.
Note 05
Stations, and the one you will actually use
Covent Garden station is a minute from the Piazza on the Piccadilly line and is famously the one to avoid at turnout, when the lifts back up. Leicester Square is four minutes west with the Northern and Piccadilly lines and is usually the better exit. Charing Cross is six minutes south, Bakerloo, Northern and the mainline platforms, and is the useful one for anybody heading out of London.
Companions arrive by taxi, and the taxi problem in WC2E is the same as the pedestrian one: the streets are narrow and half of them are closed to traffic. The office will often suggest a corner two streets from your hotel rather than the door itself, purely because it is quicker.
Note 06
Who asks for WC2E
Guests with a ticket, which is the majority. Opera and ballet at the house on Bow Street, a play in one of the theatres off the Lane, or a late show somewhere smaller. Visitors staying on the Strand with one free evening who want to eat somewhere that is not the hotel. A steady number of people who simply want a table and a conversation in a room where nobody is looking at anybody.
If there is a curtain time, put it in the first message. It sets the shape of the whole night, and a companion who knows it will plan the supper afterwards rather than a rushed dinner before.
Note 07
The three who live here
Karolina will take the counter every time and says so in the first two minutes, so you can decide. Tall, economical with words for the first hour, and reliably funny after it. Nancy wants the nine o'clock booth on Russell Street and is the most openly direct name on the board. Tina goes the other way and asks for an early table before a curtain, and she knows every shortcut in WC2 including two that are technically through a building.
From outside the zone, Roxi comes up from Belgravia for a late supper after a show, and Molly and Jasmin walk over from Soho. Availability, as always, is on the who is free page.
Note 08
The zones either side
Cross Charing Cross Road going west and Soho begins within four minutes. Everything here also sits inside the broader West End zone, which is the page to read if you are not sure which district your ticket is in. Keep going west past Piccadilly Circus and Mayfair is ten minutes on foot. Holborn, Leicester Square, Charing Cross and the Strand and Aldwych each keep a page of their own.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for Covent Garden
Asked most often
Covent Garden, asked and answered
Why a counter rather than a table?
Should I book dinner before or after the show?
Which station should I use?
How far is the Strand hotel from the Piazza?
How long should a theatre evening be booked for?
One zone either way
Next along from Covent Garden
Last strip
Say a name and an hour
Write in with a length, a time and the zone you are staying in, and a name from the board comes back with a window attached. That is the whole of the arrangement.