Walking down the street in Manhattan is an assault on the senses – masses to see everywhere, the sidewalks brimming with life (and people selling hotdogs in the 30º heat), blasts of heat from the subway ventilation grills, and an assault course crossing the roads. Amusingly there are signs everywhere telling you what to do, and some of them are quite funny.

Hoot the horn of your car and get a $350 penalty? How are you supposed to enforce that one? Especially when there’s no sign to tell you the end of the no honking zone! And ‘Please Curb Your Dog’? What does that even mean? It’s supposed to be walked off the curb rather than on the sidewalk? Or you’re supposed to somehow surb its behaviour? You can also be threatened with a $1000 fine for carrying large, obstructive objects in the Subway. So can I get that when riding the subway with my rucksack?

Oh, and while I’m at it – the subway. It works for sure – lots of trains that get you to where you need to go. But the maps are dreadful and there are not many of them, and the (lack of) signposting in the stations makes is so damned hard to know where you should go of what sort of train to take. Even locals end up peering out of the train in confusion wondering what station the train is entering. Oh, and maybe giving the stations a clean and a lick of paint would help a bit too?

Finally a line on the sign shown at the top right above – there’s a Downing Street close to Greenwich Village in Manhattan. Bit less assuming than the entrance to 10 Downing Street in the UK!