magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

phase four of my cold: horribly stuffed up and coughing.

but i implemented my new plan to get out and see more of rome. a few days ago i cut up a map of rome along the grid lines and assembles a pile of squares. (they're actually rectangles, but i like to pretend that they're squares.) i shuffled them and put them face down on my desk. whenever i have a few hours to get out and explore i'm going to pick a square, match it up to a full map to find out where it is, and go there.

i didn't take any sort of map other than my little square and the route that i had committed to mind while looking at the big map. the route took me through the vatican, where i hadn't been yet. incredibly touristy. but it was nice. and then out behind the vatican and on the road that i needed to be on to get to my square. and then i wasn't on the road. i figured that i must have taken a road that turned north from where i needed to be and so as long as i continued along in the same direction and then turned south i'd still end up where i wanted to be.

the point of going to these squares is just to find something neat. to take pictures or sketch or collect numbers. and then i'll make one of my numbered pieces out of the map square and whatever else from my trip. so i wasn't terribly concerned with where i entered the square.

eventually i turned south and came to the via aurelia antica, one of the old roman roads out of the city that is still in use and is incredibly perilous and scary to cross on foot. and then a big park. i was completely confused about where i was. maybe i had overshot my square and was off to the west of it. if i took the aurelia antica back east i thought i might end up in my square. my square did have a via aurelia on it, but i wasn't sure if they were two different roads or not.

i sat on a tree stump in the park and tried to figure it out. and then like a lightbulb going on, it made sense. i had walked through the entirety of my square without realizing that i was actually there. the street name changed on my map which i hadn't noticed. the heavy black lines that i was taking to be city walls were actually train lines. i figured that i was now southwest of my square. there was a tiny bit of green in the bottom of my square which i thought was probably part of the park that i was in and if i went all the way to the north edge and then east i would get there. and be back in my square, which was the intention.

that didn't actually happen. as i found out when i got back that bit of the park doesn't actually connect to the part that i was in. plus i was getting my east and west all dyslexically mixed up. but the park was beautiful. and was something that i wouldn't have otherwise seen, as it was only peripherally on the map i am using, and i am only using the full-sized squares from the middle of the map. and so the expedition was in some senses a success. i did get out and see more of rome, somewhere i'd like to go back to even. but i didn't really experience much of my target square except a walk along the main road in it.