Whether you're touristing or lobbying in DC, staying at the Mayflower (officially, the Renaissance Mayflower), hardly serves up the hormonal rush that helped lead to New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's downfall.

I spent a week at the Mayflower last year and have stayed a couple of other times over the last six years.  Certainly there was harlotry being worked -- political deals being brokered, trips to the Maryland shore discussed, reputations being sullied over expensive booze carelessly served in a tiny foyer bar that also served as an overpriced breakfast nook.

As for traditional harlotry, who knew -- or much cared? DC is DC.

The Mayflower on Connecticut Avenue is a few blocks from the White House and a good cab ride from Capitol Hill. Cabs and cars stack up like cordwood at the entrance. Horns and shouts -- heck, a good rival to New York City.

The rooms -- at least for guests of modest means -- are narrow, near stairs, elevators or ice machines. The marble-gold-leaf faux palace was built in 1925 and is on the Historical Registry. Presidents, actors and the queen have slept there. FDR wrote his WWII "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" speech there.

But you don't go to DC to stay in hotel rooms. Well, unless your name is Eliot or Monica, who Lewinskied some time there in the 1990s.

The Mayflower serves awesome crab cakes in one of its side hall dining rooms, and its sitdown breakfast is great for gobbling, gabbing and gawking.

My Spitzer moment occurred about January 2002. Washington was a quiet place in the wake of 9/11. The cabbie was glad for my business as he tooled me to the Mayflower. Along with my receipt, he handed me a business card to a local "gentleman's club." I shook my head. You can easily make the wrong kind of history in DC.