Originally Posted by
AlanInDC
The area around the White House is dead at night. I advise visitors staying in hotels who are coming for tourism reasons to say in the Gallery Place/Chinatown area, Dupont Circle, Georgetown, or Capitol Hill neighborhoods. There will be much more in the way of restaurants, bars, coffee houses, and shops, especially at night. In the daytime, I expect you'll be at museums, monuments, etc.
The W hotel is quite nice, though at the pricier end of the spectrum as one might expect.
Pretty good advice. If I was a tourist and staying 2 nights in D.C., I would first look at something around Gallery Place/Chinatown and then Georgetown, though Metro accessibility there is much more limited given the location of the Foggy Bottom station.