Terminal not listing Applications folder

The problem that I am running into is that when I cd into my Applications folder and try to ls to see all my folders it doesn't show anything. This is the only directory that does this as I am able to go to any of my other directories and use the usual commands. Another thing that I tried was to jump to a path from my home directory to a folder within the Applications folder and I get No such file or directory. I input the path both with and without quotes and still nothing:

cd ~/Applications/MAMP/bin

and

cd ~/'Applications/MAMP/bin'

I am using the standard Terminal provided and haven't messed around with any settings. Thanks in advance!

Solution 1:

I had to type in:

cd /

to bring me to the root directory. Then you type in

ls

and it displays all of the applications.

I think that it puts all of your applications for all the users into the root folder directory so all of the different users can access them. My personal folder/applications was empty.