Overnights, ten hours from a late start to the morning

Where an overnight sits comfortably

Camden Town is the natural home of it, because the late shows start there when everywhere else is closing and the water at midnight is the one part of NW1 that has never been crowded. The hotels by the lock are five minutes from it.

Around St Pancras the whole district improves once the last continental departure has taken its crowd away, and the rooms there are built for people who arrive at odd hours and leave at odder ones.

At home, and up the hills

A private address suits an overnight better than almost any other booking, because nobody has to cross a lobby at midnight or find a taxi at two. It matters most where the hotels run out. Highgate keeps none in the village and Muswell Hill has no Underground at all, so an overnight at a house on either hill has one quiet advantage over a late evening there: nobody is making the journey back down in the small hours. Tell the desk about the gate, the buzzer and which of two doors is the right one, and mention a dog if there is one, which is the kind of thing better known before the doorstep than on it.

How the ten hours tend to divide

Roughly: three hours of evening, a long middle that belongs to the two of you, and a morning nobody has to rush. The women who like overnights are the ones who are good at the second half of a night, once the performing has stopped. Breakfast is not compulsory and neither is conversation at eight in the morning. Some guests want the whole thing and some want the room quiet until nine, and both are perfectly ordinary.

Who takes them

Michelle prefers a nine o'clock start and a long finish, and considers seven an uncivilised hour to begin anything. Danielle asks for the doors time rather than the start time, because support acts run late and she would rather a night decided its own ending. Vanessa is calm company for the slow half of one, and Sonya knows the station district well enough to make a morning departure painless.

Notice, and what to send

A day ahead is the honest answer, two days for a Friday or a Saturday. Send the district, the building and the hour you would like her to arrive, and say whether the morning matters to you, because it changes who the desk suggests.

If your evening is already running and you would like to extend it into an overnight, ask at ten rather than at midnight. She will tell you straight whether the rest of her diary allows it, and the extra length is quoted before it starts rather than afterwards.

The morning after

She leaves when the ten hours are up rather than at first light, which is the whole difference between an overnight and a late booking nobody planned. If you have a train, tell the desk which one and the start is set so that the end of the booking lands before it rather than across it. Everything about the ladder is on the rates page, and the whole list takes overnights unless a profile says she is away.