Warehouse nights in Shoreditch, EC2A and E1

EC2A on a Tuesday, not a Saturday

The triangle between Curtain Road, Great Eastern Street and the High Street was print works and furniture trade long before it was anything else, and the buildings still say so: six storeys of brick, goods lifts bolted to the outside, windows too big for a flat. Most of it is offices by day and somebody's home by night. Curtain Road holds the bars people actually drink in midweek. Leonard Street and Paul Street go quiet by nine.

Five minutes north east puts you on Arnold Circus, the raised bandstand at the centre of the Boundary Estate, which is the oldest council housing in the country and the calmest ground in EC2A after dark. Village Underground keeps its old tube carriages on the roof round the corner on Holywell Lane. None of that is on the Saturday circuit, which is rather the point.

Rooms above the print works

The big hotel on Great Eastern Street at EC2A 3HU has the busiest lobby in the district, which makes it the simplest arrival of the lot. A few streets west at EC2A 4BH there is a low lit one, quiet in the lift. On Holywell Lane at EC2A 3ET the rooms are small and the keys are fast. Another stands on the High Street itself at E1 6JQ. Over on Finsbury Square at EC2A 1DX sits the one nearer Moorgate than Brick Lane.

We hold no arrangement with any of them and gain nothing by pointing at one over another. They are addresses. Half the bookings here are not hotels at all but warehouse conversions off Curtain Road and Redchurch Street, with a street door, a long stair and nobody on a desk. Mention it when you write in and she allows the extra minute.

Two minutes from the Overground

Shoreditch High Street is two minutes on foot from the middle of the district, on the London Overground. The Northern line sits at Old Street, a walk of eight minutes north west to the roundabout. Liverpool Street is nine minutes south and adds the Central, Circle, Hammersmith and City, Metropolitan and Elizabeth lines along with the main line platforms.

She comes in by road from the west. Before seven that is forty minutes on a poor night through Clerkenwell; after ten it is nearer twenty. Nell tells you which of the two you are getting before you agree the hour rather than after. Shoreditch is Zone 1, so the journey sits inside the fee.

Who writes in from Curtain Road

Mostly people who picked this postcode over the West End deliberately: founders in for a week of meetings around Old Street, photographers at the end of a shoot, engineers out of the big offices on Worship Street. Then the residents, who book earlier and longer and would rather stay in the flat than walk out into their own neighbourhood. Nobody here is after a grand hotel evening. They want somebody who can hold a conversation and does not look wrong on a bar stool.

An evening, timed

Half past eight, a guest at EC2A 3ET, two hours at £500. She comes up to the room, they go back down and out to a counter seat on Redchurch Street for an hour, then walk up Old Nichol Street with the shutters coming down around them. The clock began when she came through the door and closes at half past ten. Nothing is added to it afterwards.

For the longer version, four hours at £900 buys a proper table first and no glancing at the time later. Nell will tell you which length suits the plan you describe, including the times the shorter one is plenty.

Next door, and who comes out

Angelika, Michelle and Tiffany know this end of the district best. Bianka and Milena are five minutes north of it, Lea and Roxi five minutes south. Everyone else is on the board and crosses town on identical terms.

Hoxton begins at the top of Curtain Road. Spitalfields lies five minutes the other way, past the station. The walk south to Liverpool Street takes nine minutes, and Aldgate is ten more beyond that. Bethnal Green is one stop east on the Central line.