Thirty-seven floors up with Jasmin

Nine o'clock is early for Jasmin. By then most of the Wharf is heading home, and she is only just choosing a scent. Petite at 160 cm, she wears her long chestnut brown hair straight and glossy, and her brown eyes are quick, amused and rarely still. Her style is boutique-hotel chic: a silk camisole under a sharp blazer, fine gold chains, heeled sandals that add a few useful centimetres. She arrives wearing something you will ask about before the first drink.

Curious is the word that fits her best. Jasmin asks where you grew up, what you actually do all day and which city you would move to tomorrow, and she listens to every answer. Her English is bubbly and fast, full of laughter. She collects perfumes the way some people collect records, dances salsa on Wednesday nights when she can, and holds strong views on how a cocktail ought to be stirred. Her playful streak is warm, never pointed.

On the Isle of Dogs her evening goes upward: to Bōkan, the bar at the top of the Novotel London Canary Wharf on Marsh Wall, where the windows frame the whole skyline and the river curls away east. She takes the corner seat if it is free, orders off the menu to test the bartender, then turns the conversation back to you. After eleven the towers dim floor by floor, which she insists is the finest view in London.

She lives in Soho, roughly ten minutes from Canary Wharf on the Elizabeth line, so late requests are seldom a problem. Find hotels around South Quay on the Isle of Dogs page, then write to booking; the rates page lists each length.