Italian Travel Lesson #2: It's All About Who You Know

PART II

So there we were, stranded in the middle of Rome without having any clue how to get home. We waited a few minutes then approached a group of young people walking further up the road. Fortunately, one of them spoke a little English and agreed to guide us to a plaza that was relatively closer to where we needed to be.

A friendly face and the sound of English was music to our ears. After walking for a good 40 minutes, she gave us directions for the rest of our trip and we meandered through little Italian neighborhoods. If nothing else we succeeded in making a friend and getting the chance to see the Tiber at night.

We finally reached Plaza Venezia after about 2 hours of wandering through the city.

Picture this, at night

After the panic of our failed transportation and the mixture of excitement and relief of reaching the plaza, we decided we deserved gelato. Off we went to Il Gelato di San Crispino for the second time in 24 hours.

Allow me to talk a little bit more about this gelato. If you think that something as heavy and sweet as gelato can't taste light and fresh, then clearly you have been eating the wrong gelato. At San Crispino you can choose two flavors for your cup of gelato, so naturally we capitalized on this chance to taste as many flavors as possible. The first day I tried the wine paired with walnut & dried fig. The walnut and fig flavor offset the alcohol-y flavor of the wine, but went sooo well together. The second day I chose to go with the rum cocoa flavor paired with the cinnamon & ginger cupcake flavor. Both were awesome, but they didn't go as well together as the previous flavors. I wasn't complaining though :) The other flavors we all tried included:

honey cream (classic house flavor) 

stracciatella (like vanilla and chocolate chips- but better)

banana (one of the top flavors) 

hazelnut

caramel

caramel meringue

hazelnut meringue (one of the top flavors)

pistachio (one of the top flavors)

whisky

chestnut

All the alcoholic flavors had the distinct taste of alcohol but it wasn't overpowering at all (maybe this is the college kid inside of me speaking?). They paired really well with the other flavors we had. 

As we headed home, we all talked about how fun it would be if our Argentinean friends were at the hostel when we got there. This would be our last night staying at the hostel and we really wanted to get to know them better. As we rounded the corner to our hostel, speaking of the devil, we found the Argentineans at the door to the hostel building. We both seemed really happy to see each other and the way we greeted each other made it seem almost as if we were long time friends. We made ourselves comfortable inside the hostel and hung out with the guys as they had dinner. 

The night was spent practicing our Spanish, laughing at ridiculous comment, and telling stories about life in the states, in Spain, and in Argentina. We played educational games (we learned new vocabulary and lots about Argentine youth culture!) and somehow ended up turning our room into a hen-house (gallinero??), i.e. the feathers from a down comforter ended up all over the room. I couldn't help but laugh in the morning when I woke up to the sight of feathers strewn all over the floor. We have been finding feathers in our clothes and bags for days since then.

Also, remember how I said my friend and I had the best beds in the room? Well this was confirmed on the second night of our stay. The room consisted of 3 bunked beds, nothing fancy but got the job done. The bunks were a little rickety, but our beds at least had thick mattresses. The boys were stuck with sorry looking mattresses and one of their bunks looked and sounded as if it would collapse at any moment. At one point one of the guys sat on his bed and broke one of the bed-frame rods underneath. Later in the night when three people were sitting on the bed, another rod broke. We were convinced he would fall through his bed frame while he was sleeping.

Between the broken beds and the feather wars, none of us got any sleep that night, but honestly it was one of the best parts of the trip. We got to hear about their trip around Europe and we convinced them to visit Stanford and Madrid. It's a small world - we may see each other again!