Because Washington D.C. was designed before building ever began, its layout makes perfect sense. East-west streets use the letters of the alphabet (A Street, B Street, and so on) and north-south streets are numbered (First Street, Second Street). When all the letters have been used, the east-west streets continue alphabetically with twosyllable names — Adams, Belmont — and then move on to threesyllable ones. Diagonal avenues named after various states intersect the grid and form several traffic circles.

The city is divided into four quadrants — northwest, northeast, southwest, and southeast — with the U.S. Capitol more or less at the center. These quadrant locators are important when writing to someone in the city or when you give cab drivers the address of your destination.

While this design is quite wonderful, it is meaningless when you are trying to find a movie theater in the Adams Morgan neighborhood using only a subway map, which has no street names — just Metro station names and routes in bright colors. Therefore, one of the first things you need to do when you get to your hotel room (or on your way to the city) is orient yourself with the dozen or so neighborhoods that make up the city, as well as the distance from your hotel to your destination. This will help you in planning Metro trips, as well as judging how expensive a cab ride will be. We also give you the nearest Metro station and line in the listings.