I Can’t Use GPS

Posted September 17, 2015 by Tara Pealer

I got lost this week.

I mean, technically, since I have my phone on me 24/7, I wasn’t really lost, but I was doing a really good impression of it. I moved to Boston to start the fall semester a few weeks ago, so I haven’t gotten the hang of the city yet.

I was running…not late, exactly, but there was some kind of issue affecting the E line, so I got off at Hynes. My best friend, on days she wanted to walk, would get off there. She and I had walked that way once, and she had shown me some of her favorite sites on the route. I had planned to be about an hour early anyway–no big issue if I took a walk, right? The walk would hardly add fifteen minutes to my commute.

I got out of the Hynes stop and got lost immediately.

At first, I went the wrong direction. Twice. Then, after consulting my GPS, I realized I had no clue where I was, since my phone was taking me a different way than my friend had shown me. I memorized the map, turned my phone off, and started walking again taking two wrong side streets. My basic method of figuring out where I am is to backtrack until I figure out where, exactly, I am supposed to be going.

I had figured out where I was when someone stopped me to ask where the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was, and I told them–being bad at directions–to just follow me. I walked for a couple more blocks, with them following, and me ignoring my GPS. At which point, with Simmons looming to my right, I almost kept walking straight past it.

All in all, my ‘an hour early’ turned into ’15 minutes left to race into the building’, but I was on time, and definitely invigorated from my walk, like a Jane Austen heroine.

I like getting lost, actually. There’s an air of adventure to seeing something new, to going the back way around a building you know pretty well. I like the freedom to explore.

I got a chance to walk by the Fenway entrance to the Museum of Fine Arts, which is spectacular, so I quickly took a photo. It was too wide to Instagram, and I didn’t want to cut anything out, so you all can see it!

I absolutely adore walking past both the MFA and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum because they are breathtaking. They sit nearby each other like puzzle pieces you wouldn’t expect to fit as well as they do. Boston is a city where the old and historic building that holds the Boston Public Library sits right above an MBTA station and across from a massive glass building. I find the juxtaposition surprising and awe inspiring–the way a city should always make you feel.

(Don’t worry though–It’s not that easy to get lost in Boston. I just get lost everywhere!)