Exploring the town

MORNING

Grab breakfast — maybe even the vaguely appropriate eggs Benedict — at the Mayflower Hotel, where supposedly FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ate lunch daily for 20 years (the restaurant is now called Edgar). Because of its proximity to the White House, the Mayflower has plenty of brushes with presidential history — Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman both lived there. The more relevant history: The CIA in the 1960s often tested and practiced the “brush pass” in a lobby, a method of exchanging documents without being seen. Check out a bike from one of the 440 Capital Bikeshare stations ($2 for trips under 30 minutes) for getting around town. (There are maps at some stations showing the 20-minute ride out to the site of a mailbox that CIA officer Aldrich Ames used to communicate with Soviet contacts — except the current mailbox is a replacement.) Sites in the area include the Wok and Roll Restaurant, once Mary Surratt’s boarding house where John Wilkes Booth plotted with his confederates to assassinate Abraham Lincoln and two others. Ford’s Theatre is a couple of blocks away.

MIDDAY

Also drop by the Pullman House, a Beaux Arts mansion built by the family of Pullman railcar fame, but that for decades was the Embassy of Russia or the Soviet Union (until 1994). A massive radio antenna on the roof for years allowed officials there to listen in on scores of secret transmissions. Grab lunch at the Occidental, a popular dining spot for politicians, celebrities, deal makers and, apparently, spies. Photos of the restaurant’s more famous diners cover the walls — supposedly you can tell a lot about Washington from how the photos are rearranged. Legend has it that a deal that averted the Cuban Missile Crisis was struck at a table at the Occidental. Check out the who’s who of photos (but don’t bother other diners to do it).

AFTERNOON

Save the entire afternoon for the International Spy Museum, a sprawling collection of artifacts, displays and history about espionage, as well as exercises for would-be spies looking to hone their skills (memorize a “cover story” and be tested on it). The museum is organized by historical era, as well as by technology and popular culture; don’t miss displays of assassination tools, secret listening devices, the most notorious spies and an entire section on James Bond. (There’s even a small display recognizing famed chef Julia Child, who worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II.) Save a little time for the museum’s gift shop, an enormous collection of trinkets, books and gadgets for would-be spies.

EVENING

Head out to Georgetown for drinks and dinner at Mr. Smith’s of Georgetown, formerly Chadwick’s, a popular pub near the Potomac River where in 1985, Aldrich Ames, handed about 7 pounds of secret documents to Soviet diplomat Sergey Chuvakhin, including a list of Soviet citizens gathering information for the CIA. At least 10 of them were executed. Fortunately, you don’t need Ames’ traitor-padded bank account to afford the “classic American” dishes and pub grub. Finish the night a few blocks up Wisconsin Avenue at Martin’s Tavern, a corner lounge known to be a favorite spot of Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, a U.S. government economist who was said to have operated a ring of communist spies and was a member of the Soviet secret police. The casual hangout no longer features the “Spytini cocktail” it created to acknowledge the history (made with Stolichnaya, of course), but there are plenty of other cold drinks to loosen lips.