For a poor navigator like me, Manhattan should be easy. Longitudinally running avenues and their numbered cross streets help to locate yourself, if you also remember that Fifth Avenue divides the streets\u00a0into east and west.<\/p>\n
In the subway, you\u00a0need to\u00a0check whether the direction is\u00a0Downtown<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0Uptown<\/em>. Downtown is the southern tip of the island, the financial center with Wall Street. Uptown starts off from Central Park’s south side. On the subway, though, those are directions: trains marked “downtown” are heading south; those marked “uptown” are heading north. So\u00a0the meaning of\u00a0downtown<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0uptown<\/em>\u00a0varies, and disconcertingly\u00a0<\/strong>Midtown\u00a0<\/em>feels like a urban center though the name refers to a section of the island.<\/p>\n A couple of wrong choices in the unpleasant subway quickly teach what\u00a0up\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0down\u00a0<\/em>mean\u00a0here. In the same way, you learn the abbreviations of names such as\u00a0SoHo<\/em>\u00a0(South of Houston),\u00a0NoHo<\/em>\u00a0(North of Houston), and\u00a0Penn Station\u00a0<\/em>(Pennsylvania Station). The subway announcements also made me\u00a0look up\u00a0<\/strong>why Houston (\u201dHouse-ton\u201d) Street in New York is pronounced differently than Houston (“Hews-ton”) in Texas. The origins are different in spite of today’s spelling: in New York the name comes from William Houstoun and in Texas from Sam Houston.<\/p>\n