Hotel description

DC’s brand-new Mandarin Oriental occupies an unusual location, in the Portals complex, a multi-use site on a concrete promontory near the 14th Street Bridge, at the confluence of the Washington Channel and the Potomac Tidal Basin. This may mean it’s a less convenient location than some of the older hotels, but the payoff lies in the spectacular views-rooms overlook the Mall and the Washington Monument on one side, and the Basin and the Jefferson Memorial on the other.

Of course, if you’re a tourist, you’ll find the easy access to the Mall’s memorials and museums to be anything but inconvenient; and if you’re on business, you’re a short cab or Metro ride from your destination.

The relative merits of the location, however, are likely to be forgotten upon entering the hotel itself. The building blends classic Federalist architecture with Asian influences, and the rounded edges are apparently Feng Shui-mandated. Interiors are impressive, from the sprawling lobby, beneath a rotunda, to the curvaceous and expansive guest rooms, decorated in earth tones and pale greens, recalling the brick faces and oxidized copper accents of Washington’s historic buildings.

Facilities, of course, are first-class, and the service is extraordinary in typical Mandarin style, even if an American bellman in the nation’s capital wearing a mandarin-collared side-buttoned jacket is an odd and incongruous sight. The spa is one of the main attractions, itself as large as some hotels we’ve seen, offering every therapy yet devised in a surprisingly chic environment. All in all, a breath of fresh air for America’s most buttoned-up city.