By Jim Knipfel

We woke up later than usual, glad, after those first groggy moments, to remember we were in an air-conditioned hotel room, surrounded by enormous pillows. There was an ashtray on the table next to me.

We'd come down to DC the previous morning. I had to do a quick radio interview then stop by a bookstore: my only responsibilities.

The original plan was a simple but exhausting one. Together with a publicist, I was to make the three-and-a-half-hour train trip to DC early Tuesday morning. Once there, I was to take a cab to the radio station, do the show, then get in another cab, stop by the bookstore, then return to Union Station and take another train back to New York. It could be done, sure, but I had a better idea.

Instead, Morgan would come along. We'd do the stuff I needed to do, then we'd get a hotel room and stay overnight, taking full advantage of the room service, the ice machine and the air-conditioning. We hadn't had a chance to get away from town like that in several years.

Washington, DC, is a weird, often baffling place. The walk signs count down the seconds you have left before the light changes. The subway system, efficient and comfortable as it is, is dark as sin. Plus, not only do you have to swipe your card to get in, but to get out as well.

And almost all the restaurants in town, we discovered once we started looking for one after my obligations were finished, shut down between 1 and 6 p.m. From the fanciest joints to the corner delis, no one was serving. Morgan finally spotted a bar and grill that, though empty, would (amazingly enough) still make us lunch at 3 and pour us a beer.

(While looking for a restaurant, she also noted the scarcity of cellphones. Again it might have been the result of where we were, but whatever the case, it was awfully nice.)

Even the hotel room was full of unexpected oddities—pay-per-play videogames on the tv and cables and outlets for every conceivable kind of laptop. Best of all in this day and age, it was a smoking room—as proven not only by the ashtrays and the acrid haze in the room when we first let ourselves in, but by the hacking coughs Morgan heard from behind each door she passed during a run to the ice machine.

It was all quite civilized.

We'd both been to DC in the past—my last visit had been in 1988—and we'd both seen most of the touristy crap. Still, there were a few things we thought we'd check out before heading back to New York.

As we were getting ourselves together the next morning, I picked up the phone and dialed room service (still a remarkable luxury).

"Hello, Meester Jeem!" the Asian man on the other end said before I spoke a word. "What can I get for you!"

He seemed very excited. It didn't immediately strike me that he had called me by name.

"Hi, ummm…this is room 239 and, umm…"

"Yes, I know, Meester Jeem!"

(Weirder still—I was registered as "James," and this was the first time we'd called room service.)

I ignored all that, gave him the order and hung up. Twenty minutes later, the same man was at the door with breakfast.

"Hallo, Meester Jeem!"

"Umm…hello."

I stepped back and let him inside.

"So! How long you staying, Meester Jeem? Four, five days?"

"No, no—just today."

"Oh, that's too bad, Meester Jeem—you need stay longer. Have fun. Hot today, though. Dress cool!"

"I'll—I will."

He set the tray down, and began pouring me a cup of coffee. "I make you extra special good coffee, Meester Jeem! You run out, just call me and I bring more!"

I took the cup and saucer from him and set it down. "I will…thank you."

"You a musician, eh, Meester Jeem?" It was starting to get a little too personal now. But he sure seemed to love his work. I signed the bill and handed it to him with the tip.

"Oh," he said, looking at the gratuity, "you make my day, Meester Jeem!"

He blew out of the room, and we sat down to eat, somewhat baffled. He was right about that coffee.

We had a few hours yet, and thought we'd stop by the International Spy Museum and the Holocaust Memorial. Morgan—who'd been navigating since we arrived—worked things out on the small subway and city maps she'd found in the lobby, and we were on our way.

We'd never heard of it, but the International Spy Museum sure was crowded. Expensive, too. But for all that, it was a very clever and funny place. Each visitor is told to assume a cover identity and back story upon entering, with the vague threat that they could be questioned about it at any point—perhaps even tortured. They're also told that "nothing is as it seems" in the museum, which meant that doors marked "Do Not Enter" should most certainly be entered. Behind all the cleverness were displays of spy tools that would've made Maxwell Smart proud—keyhole guns, comb cameras, encoded message bowls.

But the crowds of obese, rambunctious children and obese, unmoving adults became too much for us and we made a break for it, scurrying down back passageways and around corners, looking for an escape.

Later we compared notes, and realized that we had both retained our covers, though we had never been interrogated about them. (I was Sandra Muller, 62, an Australian born in Innsbruck who worked in a clothing store and was on a business trip.)

After escaping the Spy Museum, it was on through an increasingly heavy, thick afternoon to the Holocaust Memorial, and their medical experimentation exhibit.

When I saw the security check inside the front doors, I expected trouble. After setting off the metal detector, I was dragged off to the side and given the extensive wand treatment, being asked to clean out all of my pockets individually. This went on for a long time.

When it was over, instead of turning to find Morgan waiting patiently, she was still at the x-ray machine, where another guard was emptying the contents of both of our bags.

"What are you doing?" Morgan asked the guard as I attempted to figure out what was going on. "What are you looking for?"

The woman didn't answer, just pulled a small bag of toiletries from my bag, pawed through it, yanked out the bottle of shampoo and held it aloft, asking one of her colleagues, "Can we allow this in here?"

Meanwhile, dozens of other tourists streamed past us unmolested. It always happens.

As I waited for her to hold up my underpants for inspection, Morgan asked again, "Why are you stopping us?"

The guard explained that our bags were "packed too tightly," or something to that effect, and as a result, the x-rays couldn't penetrate them.

That, of course, is bullshit. Before I could tell her this, however, she waved us along, the contents of our bags still spilled out across the table. Morgan handed me my shirt, and began repacking her own bag.

It took another 10 minutes after that to find the exhibit, which turned out, like the Metro, to be so ill-lit it was all but completely lost on me. From what Morgan told me along the way, it was mighty thorough. But dark. What is it with DC and lights?

Sadly, we could only see the first half of that, too; the train was leaving soon.

Like much of the rest of the city, Union Station's a weird place. It looks like an airport. It's laid out like an airport. The signage is what you'd find in any airport—but it's not an airport. And all that talk about train-station security? We were warned that we'd need photo IDs and proof of this and that out for inspection before we got anywhere near the train. Well, not exactly. And me, with shampoo in my bag!

Not long after the train left the station, the skies outside boiled up black, the cellphones that had been blessedly quiet for the past two days reemerged, and the gibbering began.

We were headed back to New York, all right. o