HotelChatter

Highlights: Though the hotel doesn’t offer room service, takeout from the lobby restaurant offers "surprisingly good food" that looks like a “cafeteria smartly dressed up with Asian and Ikeaesque touches.” The pool is the hotel’s best — or worst, depending on your vantage — asset, which “plays host to hipster pool parties, complete with oversize inflatable animals, a gaggle of rubber duckies, plenty of colorful mixed drinks, and hundreds of bikini and board-short-clad 20- and 30-somethings bobbing to DJ beats.” Even the “Real World: DC” crew showed up, reports the NYT.

Lowlights: Room décor doesn’t seem to have been updated yet, with “sandy brown walls, nondescript furniture and framed, faded posters of the Constitution and the presidents up through George W. Bush.” Summer weekend days aren’t for napping here, with thumping music that wafts up from the pool deck. Bathrooms are "unremarkable," save an “old-school silver bottle opener on the door frame.” Plus, well, you’re in Southwest DC, so you’ll need to take the Metro or a cab — or go for a long walk — to do any sightseeing.

Bottom line: "In some ways, the Capitol Skyline almost seems like a luxury budget hotel — a little worn, a little out of the way, but a hodgepodge of a place to meet fun people or crash for a few days at a good rate (doubles start at $109)," concludes the NYT.

[Photo: Susana Raab for The New York Times]