Staying at the DC GuestHouse is a singular experience. The hosts are unfailingly warm and entirely authentic in their desire to make their guests comfortable—and, more than that, they're lively, witty, and absorbing people who come to feel like friends during one's stay.

The house itself is exceedingly lovely and lovingly kept: it doesn't betray even the slightest whiff of the anonymous or the commercial. It's a place maintained by people who live there, people who find pleasure in beautiful things and a gracious, unpretentious spirit.

I remembered, as I enjoyed my stay, a small guest house in Istanbul, just above the Hippodrome, where the proprietor had not yet heard that our century had largely abandoned the age-old cultural  pleasure and imperative of treating guests as family. The hosts at the DC Guesthouse understand the energy and satisfaction that result in treating their guests that way as well—a little miracle in the United States, let alone Washington, DC.