First off, the apartment was immaculate; it’s cozy, quiet if the windows are closed, spotless, and well designed with furniture. Although we didn’t get the room we thought based on the pictures in the advertisement, we were very happy with the room, decorations, and amenities of a full kitchen, cute furniture, and a comfy bed (although the pillows are not the most supportive, so it’s nice there are many).
The location is about an hour walk from downtown DC or any of the monuments, but is centrally located to Trader Joe’s, coffee shops, ethnic markets, and trendy restaurants. Plus, all of the Ubers, Lyfts, and scooters are extremely cheap! Just bear that in mind if you’re more of a walker or wanting to stay cheap.
Check-in is difficult because you have to pay for parking and there are no signs or recommendations for free parking within the area. There is a lot of construction near the hotel, but you do not hear anything, it just makes it hard if you do plan on paying for parking through their lot. There is a cheap parking garage behind and around the corner to the Blue Bottle Coffee shop near the hotel that’s only $15/day with no in/out privileges, but overall is way cheaper than paying for parking and missing out on things because of traffic.
The hotel is attached to a luxury apartment complex, which makes it perfect for chilling to talk, Instaworthy pics, or feeling chic! Unfortunately, the front desk for the complex does not know any information for the WhyHotel or their check-in procedures.
The check-in process does not begin until three and you will have to have full battery for your phone because that is your key card to get into the building, park, use the elevator, and enter your room. We checked in at 12 and found ourselves with no phone numbers, access to the “hotel” or anything. Thankfully a person let us into the building and we were able to pull the WhyHotel phone number from online and someone came to let us in our room. That being said, we also had to use them to lock our room before 3:00pm even though we had already checked in because their system did not recognize anything until after 3. Be sure to tell them when you are officially checked out because there is a $100 fee if you don’t text them before checkout time.
Knowing everything we do now, we’d stay there again because of how nice the room was and how safe we felt in the building, but would plan for more money to be allocated to Ubers, Lyfts, parking, etc. so we don’t miss out on DC experiences. If you want to be in the thick of things with regards to monuments and museums, this is not the place for you. For that, it may actually be worth staying at a hotel that’s smaller and maybe a little more outdated to avoid traffic and walkability to everything DC is known for.