Let’s see, it was getting dark, correct? Follow the directions that had your shadow in front of you. You can’t miss it.
If the OP was having lunch then this is almost right.
Face the sun, then turn to your left 90 degrees and you’ll be heading East (which is a pretty good guess as to which direction the Atlantic would be, from Boston, unless it is shaped oddly.)
I’ve lived in Portland for going on seven years, and while I can tell you how to get to the downtown area, Columbia Gorge and Mt. Hood, don’t ask me where the streets are in my own neighborhood. Almost nothing in Portland is alphabetized. Bidwell is next to Lexington is next to Miller. Memorizing every goddamn street in the city is not in my future.
I lived south of Boston for a couple of years. The street system there is an even bigger nightmare than here, as they just paved the cow paths and put random names on them. I never knew where the hell I was in that city.
All that aside, I am one of the spatially challenged, as Anaamika mentioned. It is a true curse. I never knew I had that problem until I nearly got lost in the woods when I was a teen. I invariably turn the wrong way to go somewhere, or more especially, try to return from somewhere. I turned left on the street to get there? Well then, I’ll turn left when I leave there and end up completely lost. I’ve been lost in nearly every major European capital. If it wasn’t for the transit system, I’d still be wandering about, homeless, on the streets of London.
Not everyone is rich. People need to keep their privilege in mind.
I know where stuff is in my city. Give exact directions? I probably couldn’t, because I’m so used to it, I just go by rote. It’s like, “oh, that’s on, yeah, Liberty Ave. How far is it from here? Fuck if I know. Just like, go that way and keep walking.” (Plus half the roads are usually closed for “construction”. 
You never got your Obama phone?
I’ve lived in or near Boston most of my life, although I haven’t spent much time in the downtown on a regular basis. From some areas of the city, namely the area around Faneuil Hall, the North End, City Hall Plaza I could easily direct you to the waterfront. It might not be exactly where you want to be on the waterfront but there will be water.
However, if you’re in the Back Bay, Chinatown, Downtown Crossing then travelling in pretty much any direction will eventually hit the water and I wouldn’t know which way is best or what directions are fastest. I don’t know because it’s not something I ever need to do and I’d probably take the T to a station near whatever specific landmark I need to get to. Taking the Blue Line to Aquarium is a pretty no nonsense solution. If you dropped me at Downtown Crossing and asked me to walk to the Aquarium I wouldn’t know what streets to take because I never do that. By trial and error I would get there, but it’s not something I’d feel comfortable giving directions to a stranger.
These days I’d probably use my smartphone for directions.
They’re rich enough to go on long distance trips, eat out at restaurants, and insult the staff for not knowing something they also don’t know. That’s more than rich enough to afford a smartphone. “Not everyone is rich” is especially silly when one of them actually had a smartphone, but would rather insult waiters for not being a GPS service than her cell provider for not providing reception in a major metropolitan area.
I stopped at a convenience store in a small town in Indiana where there were supposed to be 3 covered bridges quite close by. The cashier had no idea what I was talking about. The second said she had heard of them but didn’t know where they were. She reached over to a rack and pulled out a map of all of the covered bridges in the state. The 3 bridges were almost within walking distance of the store and the people there had no idea about them.
Folks where I work are not able to give directions to get to our building, we are 4 blocks from the expressway. smh
Somehow I always end up being the person to stop and give directions to people looking lost in downtown Minneapolis or in my home suburb.
A few months back, someone was asking the clerk at a convenience store how to get on the northbound highway. She had no idea. I pointed out the window “See that sign?” it was the sign to the ON RAMP going north. Easily visible and legible from the store registers. :smack:
A lot of responses seem to be about tourist things such as museums and buildings etc. But I’m as astonished as the OP about the harbour. I’ve never experienced anything like that where I’ve lived.
I grew up in Ottawa and everybody I ever knew could say where north is.
I’ve lived in Halifax for several years and everybody there knew where their harbour is.
I’ve lived in Montreal a few times and everybody there knows the cardinal directions.
What’s worse than a local not knowing how to get somewhere? Another local who gives you directions that include the term, “Used to be”.
Many years ago (before we had the opportunity to have a GPS-enabled computer with us 24/7) I was heading through some Washington, DC, suburbs and stopped to get gas. I asked someone at the gas station how to get to National Airport. He happily gave me three or four statements (lefts, rights, straight-ahead-for-two-miles, etc.). One of his instructions very clearly told me to “… turn right where McMurray’s red barn used to be before it burned down.” :dubious: :smack:
Less than helpful.
This discussion brings to mind a couple of experiences I’ve had in the past:
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When I was 19 and working in fast food while going to college, one day I had this businessman come through the drive-thru. As he paid for his food, he asked me where the nearest good hotel was. I was 19. I wasn’t in the habit of staying in hotels in the same small town where I lived. I told him, with much confusion in my voice, “I don’t know”. He gave me a dirty look as he drove off.
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A year or two later, still in college, I was ridesharing with someone who owned a little beige car. She was a real ditz. Once her car broke down and when she called for a tow truck she told them to look for a banana-colored car. After she hung up and I was like “wut?” she said it’s the color of the inside of a banana.
Anyway, the real story here is that our route to college was along a street that passed by a larger university and I was familiar with that since I looked at their sign and huge stadium every day as we passed by it. One day she got a lead on a part time job at the university. She had to go to some trouble asking several people for directions how to get there for the interview. Since she was my only ride home, I had to tag along as she wound her way to the east edge of town, then around to the south side, then cut back west - at least 5 miles of this really circuitous route. I assumed the odd route meant that the job was in some building elsewhere in town. Nope. By the time we reached the end of her long and winding directions, we were at the very place we passed every day! :smack:
I usually have a highly accurate internal navigation system, but it has failed me miserably a few times. When we moved from Los Angeles to the Kansas City area, it took me about 18 months before I stopped getting completely lost every time I drove somewhere new. I’m not talking about the fine adjustments of Street vs. Terrace, I’m talking about the basic cardinal directions.
The first reason I struggled was because in pretty much all of Southern California, there are mountains toward the east and north. Even if it was smoggy, you could generally make out the shape of a mountain or the lights from an antenna. I didn’t realize how much I relied on the mountains and foothills as a gross estimate of which direction I should be going in.
However, in the Kansas City area, we have chosen to keep our mountains hundreds of miles away, just outside of Denver, or down in the Ozarks. Depending on where you are in the area, there may not be many tall buildings or water towers to help orient a person.
The second thing that totally jacked up my internal navigation system is that I didn’t realize that Interstate 35 was not a north/south freeway. In California, the major freeways I used all the time were strictly north/south or east/west, following the standard of odd-numbers-go-north-and-south, even-numbers-go-east-and-west. (Forget about that 50-mile segment of Highway 101 that goes east/west through the San Fernando valley.)
Anyway, I-35 runs north and south from Texas to Minnesota, crossing through Kansas along the way. Unfortunately, it had never sunk into my brain that I-35 runs northeast/southwest through Kansas and Kansas City. The rest of the street grid runs generally north/south and east/west.
So, about a week after we had arrived in the KC area, my wife, two little daughters, and I were trying to get home from the big mall about 8 miles from our home. We got so hopelessly lost, it wasn’t funny. Between road construction, a somewhat foggy night, not being able to get oriented spatially because we couldn’t see any tall landmarks, and a freeway I didn’t realize was not a true north/south freeway, we drove around for about 2 hours. I tried to stay on the “main roads”, but every couple of miles, the road would end in a construction zone, so I had to turn around.
We had ended up getting lost in an area that didn’t have many open businesses, and my kids were tired and cranky (as were my wife and I).
I finally stumbled across an on-ramp to I-435, which loops around Kansas City and its suburbs. I knew that I-435 would eventually cross I-35 and then we would be home about 5 minutes later. However, I was so lost, I didn’t know which direction to drive when I got on the freeway. I told my wife that, in the worst possible case, I would drive the entire 75 or 80 mile loop, because I wasn’t going to turn around again!
Luckily, I had driven the right direction and found the right freeway interchange, but, man, was I scared and frustrated. A few months later, I discovered that we had actually been about 2 miles from our house several times, but simply couldn’t tell where we were.
Also, there are multiple apps where you can download a map ahead of time and have it saved on your phone just in case your service is spotty and you don’t have Wi-Fi. I’ve started doing this anytime I go on vacation somewhere unfamiliar. Even if I am getting service it’s usually faster to look up the downloaded map, and definitely more reliable than hoping I’ll find someone who can give me directions. And this is usually in addition to having a guide book with a map in it.
Who are the dopes who couldn’t smell the harbor, when it was only 8 blocks away? In every harbor town I’ve been in, you can smell it from farther than that!
Or just walk downhill.
Water runs downhill, so the harbor will be at the low point of the city.
There’s a possibility that they were just messing with you, although with several employees involved that seems less likely. I was in Boston on vacation when I was very young, and I overheard two clerks in a shop laughing about giving someone the wrong directions. Made me wonder if that’s a thing in tourist areas for people in those jobs who are assholes, when they think they can get away with it. Not that I think that Boston is especially overrun with tourist hating assholes, just a coincidence that I had that experience there (I assume).
That being said, I agree with several posters saying that some otherwise intelligent people don’t have the same degree of spatial orientation that many others do. I am one of them, and the GPS capability in my car and smartphone is such a life enhancer.
Hey Pal!
How do I get to town from here?
And he said “Well just take a right where they’re going to build that new shopping mall, go straight past where they’re going to put in the freeway, take a left at what’s going to be the new sports center, and keep going until you hit the place where they’re thinking of building that drive-in bank.
You can’t miss it.”
And I said “This must be the place.”
From here.
I only lived in Boston a few years, but I have no idea what to tell a tourist asking for directions to “The Harbor”. Sure, from downtown Boston there’s water within walking distance in several directions… but which of the umpteen miles of built up coast do you want to go to? Most of it is a mix of hotels, condos, private marinas, and functioning wharves. I suppose, at least, I’ve never had much reason to go to them.
If the hypothetical tourist was a lot more specific, I could have told them precisely how to get to the USS Constitution, but only because I passed it on my way to work from the T.
duplicate