The clock in my Washington hotel room said it was 6:15 when I woke up this morning. My computer, still set to California time, said it was 3:15. I decided to get up after glancing out the window at the blue dawn (same view I saw in the late afternoon shadows when I arrived yesterday, but softened).
After I slipped on running clothes and went outside I could see my own hotel room five rows up from the bottom of the brutalist grid above, and four rows over from the left. Mine is the only window in the whole facade that is cracked open to the extent that the architecture will allow. Hate air conditioning, and the weather doesn't seem impossibly hot, or certainly not at this hour.
I started wandering the irregular streets and alleys just behind the hotel. I guess this would be called upper Dupont Circle, though maybe the immediate neighborhood has another name. If so, I am unlikely to find out what it is.
Many of the houses, though old, are only modestly kept up, a relief from the spiky perfection of true gentrification.
As the sun rose high enough to illuminate building fronts (and blur their details) I retreated to the hotel for a shower and breakfast.