Well ~~ Kings Road Chelsea a bit further out; but Carnaby St off Regent St only just up from Piccadilly Circus, off which also runs Shaftesbury Ave the heart of Theatreland, & Piccadilly in which is leading store Fortnum & Mason, & in the Circus itself is Swan & Edgar, & halfway up Regent St, crossing it at Oxford Circus, is Oxford St where many main stores [e.g. Selfridge's, the original John lewis & Debenhams] ... and there are hotels in all these [the Ritz is in Piccadilly], or not far away in Park Lane [Dorchester, Grosvenor House], the Strand [Savoy]...

Still, Penny, I agree that as they didn't actually know what they were looking for there wasn't that much you could tell them. I think I should just have told them to go to Piccadilly Circus & walk in any direction & they would find something interesting. I still think that by 'Downtown' they would have meant the West End.

~M~