Town Talk
The lobby is seeped in history-meets-society. The halls smell like a new pack of cards. The rooms are as distinguished as Brioni suits. Here, smack on the cusp of the White House lawn (one long block away), is the historical, Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, Beaux-Arts architectural wonder—the luxury 4-star Willard Hotel.
If you’re looking for the best hotel to hit the snooze button on early in the morning to take advantage of the Smithsonian Museums, the Willard is the place to bed down. And if you are a museum fanatic, you really will want to stay close, as the Smithsonian consists of not one museum, but 19 museums, 9 research centers and over 140 affiliate museums around the world. Lucky for the D.C. traveler, you only have to cover the first 19.
The hotel offers major indulgence, with all the basics of a luxury hotel (huge rooms, marble bathrooms, heavy wooden furniture, flat screen TVs, wired-to-the-hilt everything, and then some). And the 17 pieces of equipment (including treadmills, cycles and weight training) in the Fitness room, followed by a spa treatment (or two or three), will help you pump up or wind down for or from the museums.
WHY STAY? This is the real Washington, D.C., where all the Presidents have been staying or eating almost since the day it opened in 1818. Calvin Coollidge lived here; Ulysees S. Grant took his afternoon cigar and brandy here; Abraham Lincoln was smoked in pre-inauguration by famed detective Allan Pinkerton to keep him safe from a possible assassination; and more pedestrian celebrities joined, among them, Gypsy Rose Lee, Emily Dickinson, P.T. Barnum, Houdini, Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, P.T. Barnum and more. Perhaps the most amazing celebrity incident came when, in 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his “I Have a Dream.”
WHERE TO EAT?
Café du Parc is an amazingly authentic French bistro (they’re quite rare in the States, actually), where most D.C. natives go for their puff pastries and morning breakfast meetings. And even though the Occidental Grill and Seafood restaurant might overpower it with history (and photos to back up that history), the food at Café du Parc is perfect for any meal… and so easily accessible from the guest rooms or off the street (plus, no stuffy suits and ties required). Highly recommended is the pate plate.
WHAT TO DO IN-HOTEL?
The Elizabeth Arden Red Door Spa at the Willard offers 80 minute Swedish Massages that make leaving the hotel to visit the D.C. museums and monuments almost seem second in priority. Why leave to go anywhere when you can be this indulged.
The Willard Washington Interncontinental Hotel
1401 Pennsylvania Ave, N.W.
Washington, D.C., 2004
1-877-270-1390
http://www.ichotelsgroup.com
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