Extended stays: weekends and longer visits, planned like a timetable

An extended booking is not one unbroken block of time. Most guests plan evenings together and a few daytime outings, with free hours in between for work, sleep and her own rest. The desk sets out the schedule with you before confirming: which evenings, which daytime plans, which nights. That written plan becomes the booking, and it keeps surprises off the table on both sides.

Friday: meet at 19:00 at your hotel near Hyde Park, dinner on Westbourne Grove, then the night. Saturday: a late breakfast, the Portobello Road market at its busiest, a free afternoon, then theatre and supper. Sunday: a slow walk along the canal to Little Venice, a long lunch in Maida Vale and a relaxed goodbye before your evening train from Paddington. Each weekend is quoted for its own plan, so tell the desk what shape yours takes.

Several days together work best with space built in. She will need a few hours to herself each day, and most guests find they welcome the same. The desk writes those breaks into the plan from the beginning, so nobody has to ask for them, and the time spent together feels unhurried because of them.

Breaks also make the stay easier to fit around your own commitments. A conference morning, a call with the office or a lunch with family can sit in the gaps without anyone rearranging the evening, and she will be ready at the next agreed time, rested and dressed for whatever comes next.

For several nights, a hotel with space and a view earns its price. On the park side, rooms at the Royal Lancaster London look out across Kensington Gardens, while the townhouse hotels of Notting Hill, The Portobello Hotel and The Laslett among them, feel more like living on a residential street than checking into a hotel. Serviced apartments in Bayswater suit guests who like a kitchen and a front door of their own.

The quoted figure is settled once, in cash, when you first meet at the start of the stay. Nothing is collected in instalments during the weekend, so the time together never pauses for arithmetic. If the plan grows while you are here, the desk confirms the extra hours and their cost in writing before they begin, and that addition is settled the same simple way.

Should the stay include a day trip, Oxford or Bath from Paddington for instance, her travel is added to the quote as a named cost. Inside Zones 1 and 2 her journeys are included throughout. For longer journeys out of London, the travel companion page explains how those bookings are put together.

Patricia is gentle and observant and can lose a whole afternoon in a bookshop, which makes her easy company on a slow Saturday. Karolina gets to know a city through its buildings and has plenty to say about the iron arches over Paddington's platforms. Angelika is precise about time and passionate about contemporary art, so a gallery morning fits her well. Lucy draws constantly, often runs beside the canal and can pick out the brightest planet over the rooftops on a late walk home. Karolina and Angelika are both raven haired companions.