I have a horrible feeling that I am missing something very obvious, but here goes!
Nautilus has a handy context menu containing useful options like "Open in Terminal". Just right-click in an unused area of the window and select the option. My issue is what does one do if the window is full of files, as is often the case? In this case, the right-click menu I want is replaced with file options, and "Open in Terminal" is not available.