Answer: Near Engine Company Number 1, pictured below.
Engine Company 1 is located on M Street, NW, not far from our apartment. So, whenever the trucks roll, day and night, we hear their sirens and horns.
The noise doesn't really bother us, even in the middle of the night. We are now used to the noises of city life after living in Florence and NYC. In Florence, we lived near a hospital (the one where Leonardo da Vinci once interned). So, the sirens of the ambulances blared as they rolled by.
In NYC, we lived at the corner of 59th Street and 3rd Avenue, a very busy and therefore noisy intersection. What made our NYC location especially noisy was its proximity to the always busy Queensboro Bridge over the East River. The Queensboro, one of the crossings without a toll, often had traffic snarls during the afternoon rush hour and in the evenings. Add to that the overnight construction on 3rd Avenue (updating aging water mains and adding fiber optic cable) and you have a recipe for a heaping helping of loud noise. After a few weeks, we were able to tune out the noise and sleep well. No joke.
In fact, after becoming accustomed to city noise, we missed it when we visited the relative tranquility of Chapel Hill and suburban Orlando. It was so quiet there that we had difficulty falling asleep at night. No joke.
All this goes to show that we have a talent for picking locations to live that are (a) near a Four Seasons hotel and (b) in a very noisy part of a city.
Who knew?
P.S. Shortly after writing this post, the alarm in our apartment starting clanging--very, very loudly. After a couple of minutes, the trucks from Engine Company 1 arrived.
Apparently, a sprinkler in Nobu's kitchen malfunction and triggered the fire alarm. After a short while, the alarm was cancelled and the trucks returned to the firehouse. They weren't there along. The trucks responded to an emergency elsewhere, with sirens wailing. We hardly noticed.
P.S. Truck No. 2 getting ready to roll.
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