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In 4 days i will return home after a 10 year exile.

Here's a photo of the place: http://url.rexroof.com/1108

Termini (main train station) is in the middle right side (cut off diagonal rectangle). The hostel i'm staying at is immediately right of Termini. The pentagon on the left side, above the curve in the Tiber River, is Castel San Angelo. To the left of that is the entrance to the Vatican City - the curves are the collonades built by Bernini, a badass Baroque architect/sculptor - and the rest of the VC is off the page. Still, you can see the centre of the plaza in front of St Peter's, where i would enjoy sitting down and eating a can of soup.

The huge green area in the upper middle is Villa Borghese (a huge park previously residence of the Borghese family), and in there is a museum with some of Bernini's best sculptures in it, as well as some choice Caravaggio paintings, like David holding the head of Goliath. The park is a nice place to go and hang out, but keep your guard up after night, who knows what manner of young 16 yr old is out roaming.

Immediately left of the park is an oval shape with a dot in the middle, Piazza del Popolo and its obelisk, and there are three main, straight roads extending downwards from that plaza. The obelisk is one of a few famous ones in Rome and the plaza is nice enough, you might even find a younger man sitting buddha style in the center plaza, and feel inclined to headbutt him. If you follow the rightmost road, you'll reach the Spanish Steps towards the edge of the park, but this isn't really visible from the satellite map.

The middle road leads to a thick white line, that's a famous plaza where skinheads have been known to stab Filipinos while the cops watch on, and if you were to continue that line on down (though the road doesn't go), then the large brown rectangle shape (at a diagonal) is the Circo Massimo (big chariot race place). On its right there is a road going up and at a slight diagonal to the right that leads to the Colosseo (the slight oval shape), where i used to take the subway to on the weekends and where Gypsies steal cd players (among other things) if given a 1/2 second window of opportunity. The real Colosseo is not visible - Nero fell a while back - but of course the famous stadium is there, maybe even with a Pope inside, giving a nighttime speech. On the way from the Circo Massimo to the Colosseo, the Foro Romano is on the left.

But back to the middle road from Piazza del Popolo: about 4 blocks in and to the right is (was? soon to find out) Victoria's Pub, an English pub where i first learned to appreciate Guinness and where i plan on spending my 29th birthday. Thus Victoria's is one of the most important places in my life - how else would i have ended up in Ashley's so often?

Down the leftmost road and a bit to the left you will see a long dark rectangle with 3 white dots in it. I believe this is Piazza Navona, a plaza with 3 nice fountains, a great place to drink wine, play guitar for money, and get hastled by cops.

Ok: draw a line between the bottom two dots in Piazza Navona, then draw a line perpendicular from that, equidistant from the two dots. Follow this line to the right until you reach the larger white dot. That is the Pantheon, and about a block from that is Miscellanea, the bar that took most of my lunch money, and one of the most memorable locations from my high school years.

Now you know my Rome.

Disclaimer: this includes most of the places in the picture, but not a lot of places i used to hang out that are out of the picture, like Fermi, AOSR, and a few clubs. Also, it's all from memory so i could be wrong (good heavens!).