Italian Travel Lesson #1: Learn to Improvise

PART II

We ate at a restaurant near the fountain called El Presidente. We all savored the warmth of the restaurant and tried to inconspicuously wipe up the puddle of drool that was forming beneath our table. I am a food-lover and my roommate can vouch that I had been eagerly looking forward to eating Italian food for about 10 days prior to the trip. The first order of business: bruschetta and pasta.

I've really come to appreciate the variety of flavors in different olive oils. Spanish olive oil is quite different from Italian olive oil - either way, I was in heaven. Just look at our happy faces.

We realized there was a gelato place less than a block over which boasted to be the best gelato in all of Rome, so without any hesitation we headed there after our meal. I personally am not a huge fan of ice cream, but eating authentic gelato was on my list of things I must do while in Italy. After tasting this gelato, however, I'm afraid that I will never be able to eat ice cream or frozen yogurt again. It's just not worth it.

This place is called Il Gelato di San Crispino – you may have heard it mentioned in the movie Eat, Pray, Love or in countless food magazine articles that rate it as a star in the gelato industry. They have 26 flavors, all distinct, fresh, and delicious. It is a quaint little shop where only a handful of people can be inside at a time, but even in the dead of winter and in the middle of the snowfall, they had quite a bit of business. On that first trip (we made multiple), we sampled the classic honey flavor, wine flavor (yes, it tasted like wine!), walnut & dried fig, and caramel. We were in love. I strongly recommend, no, insist that anyone and everyone who travels to Rome to visit this and only this gelato shop, you will not be disappointed.

I could go on about this gelato, but I'll spare you incessant raving. We heading to do one last bit of sight-seeing before calling it a day. We headed to the Spanish steps and the Plaza de Espagna (holla Madrid!)

 And then visited the Antiguo Caffe Greco - a cafe near the Spanish steps that has been in business for hundreds of years. It's been visited by a bunch of famous people, including John Keats, so we stopped by and had some cannoli.

We headed home to our hostel, ready to meet up with another pair of friends who traveled in to Rome that day (about 6 hours late thanks to the snow). They needed to do some shoe shopping (they weren't so eager to improvise with sexy plastic bags like we did) and while we waited for them, we met a group of Argentinean students who had spent 3 weeks traveling around Europe and made their last stop in Rome. They were to share our 6 bed, co-ed dorm with us and were just about to take over the beds my friend and I grabbed last night (which were the most comfortable beds in the room) when we walked in. They were really nice and immediately gave us back our beds and after they realized we spoke Spanish, we knew were meant to be friends.

Our other friends finally made it back to the hostel and beamed at us with their new boots that allowed them to "leap across the snow like snow gazelles" instead of waddle like a penguin to avoid falling (we were jealous). We talked, explored, ate dinner, got to know our new Argentinean friends, and then began getting ready for bed - when suddenly some of the girls realized they did not bring shower shoes for the hostel shower. Being the savvy Stanford students we are, however, this was not a problem. Here is the second stroke of ingenuity of the day:

Take a look at those babies. They are shower shoes crafted entirely out of a plastic shopping bag, designed and manufactured by my friend Faith. You will notice, that when we are determined, we don't let anything get in our way... unfortunately the city of Rome and public transportation don't quite feel the same way, but that's another story. Our first day was slowly coming to an end and we eagerly awaited the next day of our adventure.