Soho and Covent Garden

Once a red-light district, today's Soho delivers more "grown-up" than "adult" entertainment, offering some of London's best nightclubs, live music venues, restaurants, and theaters. By day, this hotbed of media production reverts to the business side of its late-night scene. If Soho is all about showbiz, neighboring Covent Garden, home to the Royal Opera House, is devoted to culture. Both offer an abundance of narrow streets packed with one-of-a-kind shops and lots of character.

The narrow, winding streets of Soho lie to the east of Regent Street and to the south of Oxford Street. To the west of Wardour Street, there are lots of interesting small boutiques around Foubert's Place and on Brewer and Lexington streets, which also boast some of London's best-value restaurants. To the east of Wardour Street is nightlife central. At its southern end is gay mecca Old Compton Street and beyond that Shaftsbury Avenue, London's equivalent of Broadway. Between here and Leicester Square is London's compact Chinatown. Charing Cross Road, to the east of the square, is famous for its secondhand bookshops, and tiny Cecil Court is a pedestrianized passage lined with small antiquarian-book sellers.

To the east of Charing Cross Road lies Covent Garden. Just north of the Piazza and the adjoining Royal Opera House, busy Long Acre bisects the district on an east-west axis. On the north is a nexus of yet more narrow streets with lots of interesting shops and the Donmar Warehouse,one of London's best and most innovative theaters where stars like Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor take to the stage. Nearby Monmouth Street is the place to look for innovative fashion. Wellington Street, south of Long Acre, has several reasonably priced restaurants for a quick pretheater bite.

At the end of Wellington Street is the semicircular Aldwych, lined with grand buildings. Moving west down the Strand is the huge 18th-century piazza of Somerset House,which contains the Courtauld Institute Gallery. Just behind the Strand are small lanes that will make you feel you've stepped back into the18th and early 19th century. On the way to the verdant Embankment Gardens bordering the river, you may pass the Adam Houses and the Benjamin Franklin House, where the noted statesman lived in the years leading up to the American Revolution.