Research Boulevard (or Don't Go Back to Rockville)

Google Directions showed the restaurant as a 1.3 mi., 26 min. walk from the hotel. It was warm, and not too late. So I walked. 

Waiting for the light and crossing the six lanes of Shady Grove Road just outside the hotel took about six minutes.

On my walk, I saw a lot of traffic garages. Most mostly empty.

A sign for the Shady Grove Road exit on Rte. 270 seemed closer than it was.

The white van reminded me of being in Fairfax County, waiting for a taxi outside a Metro station, when the Virginia sniper was at large. (There were false reports that the sniper used a white van.)

I saw two Dalmatians. One outside an animal hospital.

And one inside the window of a clothing store once I reached the brightly lit recreation of a downtown street where the restaurant was located. (It's called Rio though it's constructed around a manmade lake.)

Shadows on the sidewalk.

On my way down I passed two joggers, one dog walker, and a guy sitting on this bench with a backpack beside him. On the way, back he was gone. I passed a man carrying a golf bag headed into an indoor golf center. Then nobody until I got back to Shady Grove Road. A young couple (I suppose) was waiting for a bus. She was wearing a big winter coat. He was wearing a hoodie, plastic flip-flops and socks. Stranger than paradise.