Chicago is an easy city to negotiate: streets form a grid and numbering is consistent, beginning at State and Madison streets. State Street - "that great street" in Sinatra's song - is at zero east and west and Madison at zero north and south. Lake Michigan , which provides Chicago with some of its most attractive open space (twenty miles of lakeshore lie within the city limits), serves as a clear point of reference for getting your bearings - the lake is always to the east of the urban grid. Michigan Avenue is the city's main thoroughfare, running between the lakeside museums and parklands, the densely packed skyscrapers of downtown and the diverse low-rise neighborhoods that spread to the north, south and west. It's here that you might experience the full force of "The Hawk," the nickname given to the strong wind that blows off the lake. The nickname " Windy City " was coined by a New York newspaper editor describing the boastful claims of the city's promoters when pitching for the World's Columbian exhibition of 1893. The Chicago River , which cuts through the heart of downtown Chicago to Lake Michigan, separates the business district from the shopping and entertainment areas of the North Side. The latter include the upscale Near North and Gold Coast neighborhoods and the artists' lofts and galleries of River North , plus the modestly charming area of Old Town , the young professional enclaves of Lincoln Park Wrigleyville and Lakeview and hip Wicker Park .

In contrast to the wealth and prosperity of the North Side, the deprived South Side is more like New York's South Bronx: a huge and, in places, desperately poor expanse with a justifiably dangerous reputation. But while large areas are definitely unsafe after dark and dodgy even at midday, a few corners of the South Side are well worth visiting - particularly the Gothic campus of the University of Chicago , and neighboring Hyde Park , site of the Museum of Science and Industry - one of the largest and most popular museums in the US. Apart from Oak Park to the west, which holds the childhood home of Ernest Hemingway and more than a dozen well-maintained examples of the influential architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright , suburban Chicago has little to offer.