centre ville, city centre, centro città, Stadtmitte....

On the road in Europe, the words in the post title, and similar expressions in other languages, direct you to the middle of town. With luck, you'll find a parking space, "facilities," old buildings to stare at, carved doors and doorways, towers and turrets, and cafés and restaurants with outdoor tables. And inevitably, a cathedral, a residence, a basilica, a chapel, reminding you that an esthetic experience  also has a spiritual dimension.

Frequently the cafés and such are to one side or the other of the great building, or behind it, and you get to focus on  the parts of the architecture that hold the building up.

Often, the tired and thirsty traveler will see spires, towers, from a distance, a reminder that food and drink and shopping are not far. Once refreshed, it's only polite to step inside the exalted building and marvel at the style of the interior, whether austere or embellished, the crafts and sensibility of centuries past are unsurpassed.

When I'm home in New York, probably because I have one of those faces, I'm the one picked out of a crowd to give directions. Which I do, cheerfully and accurately, and working in the opportunity to practice a few more useful phrases when I can. But ask me for the city center? Just about wherever you are around here, you're in it! And that takes some 'splainin' indeed.

All this leads me to the memory of a clear day when I was coming up Madison Avenue on the M1 bus, sitting on the left and staring moodily out the window, and the bus slowed in back of St Patrick's Cathedral  - it fronts on Fifth Avenue - presenting me with a glorious view of flying buttresses. You wouldn't get a nicer look at flying buttresses anywhere, I thought - well, Bourges, but still - and I exclaimed in delight "Centre ville!" Apparently many of the passengers were visitors, because necks craned, heads nodded, cameras clicked, and there were an unusual number of smiles.

A closing thought - Fifth Avenue is also graced by the presence of Temple Emmanuel, the largest synagogue in the world. Visitors from countries where neither Christianity nor Judaism are part of the culture often mistake the beautiful temple for Saint Patrick's, and take pictures of themselves standing in front of it. I'm sure there are smiles in Heaven when this happens. After all, Omnipresence is Omnipresence in whatever age and whatever language.

This is a street view of the front of Saint Patrick's - the scaffolding is because of mandatory pointing up the masonry work, revêtement as they say, so the building is obscured. But spiritual comfort remains available on social media.