Italian Travel Lesson #3: When All Else Fails, Eat Gelato

If you haven't gotten sick of hearing about gelato yet, you will be now, but I have to mention it one more time before concluding our trip in Rome.

After a long night of laughs with our new friends in the hostel, 4 slow-moving girls tried to pack in another day of museums and sight-seeing. My bunk-mate and I were at the hostel reception desk waiting for our other friends to be ready to leave. The hostel receptionist was telling us about how just a few days ago he had lost a ring his father had given him 10 years ago. He said he had no idea what may have happened to it but he had been really upset about it for the past couple days. Just about a minute or two later, one of our friends comes into the lobby and tells us she found a wedding room in her bed the night before. As she shows it to the receptionist, it turns out it was his ring! No one is really sure how or why it ended up in her bed (I can assure you it was nothing sketchy), but the receptionist was beyond grateful to have found the ring that meant so much to him.

Our plan was to see the Colosseum and perhaps 1 or 2 other museums-we were glad to see the snow had begun to melt a bit because that meant there should be less trouble for us in getting to the airport later that night (our flight left at 6am, so our trip to the airport would have to be at 3am or so- these plans were actually really complicated, I'll talk more about it later).

The Colosseum and the Roman Forum were beautiful.

Unfortunately, they were also closed due to the weather. We figured it was probably safer to not have people walking around on slippery ruins so we took a few more photos and headed to to the nearby Musei Capitoli. It was also closed due to the weather- which was confusing considering that it was an indoor museum, but nonetheless tried to make the best of it so headed to another museum on our list called the Palazzo Barberini.

When we arrive, we realized it is also closed. We couldn't really understand why so many indoor touristic facilities were closed when the weather was considerably better than the days previous and all these places were indoors. We figured we gave it our best shot and had our third and final visit to Il Gelato di San Crispino (all within 48 hours). We deserved it after spending half of our day walking around in the cold to closed museums.

Pistachio on the left and hazelnut meringue on the right

Afterwards we headed to the Pantheon, and (surprise, surprise) it was also closed. We walked through to Plaza Navona and stopped for a free limoncello tasting along the way. I was really tempted to buy some but realized I wouldn't get it through security at the airport (darn). We also visited the Castle di San Angelo, which we knew would be closed but provided a beautiful view for more pictures.

We decided to part ways so we could grab some lunch and finish packing. Delicious food, wine, and one hell of a waiter made up for our disappointing morning- in case you were wondering, the stereotype of the Italian lover does exist.