Alex Ostler: Life of Adventure: A Gelato A Day: Italy

When we were in Lugano, Switzerland we were approached by an old man smoking a cigar and walking his dog who seemed puzzled at two girls laying on wet grass eating yogurt without spoons. He was a jolly fellow who spoke some English and so we asked him how we could get to Italy by train.

"By train? Why, when Italy is just around that corner?" He pointed to the other side of the lake.

So, with yogurt remnants still on our faces we turned towards Italy. Gelato! Pasta! Hot men!

Ever since I was very young I DESPERATELY wanted to go to Italy. I imagined myself wandering about vineyards and having old women make me ravioli and finding a mysterious letter from some girl named Juliet in Verona.... (In reality I was just substituting myself in for Amanda Seyfried in Letters to Juliet, okay? Forgive me for being so unoriginal.) So you can imagine my surprise when we biked across the border into Como and we were immediately greeted by potholes. garbage. the most terrifying drivers ever. Where did the frolicking lambs go? The bike lanes? The people who spoke English?

Como, Italy
People say Como is the greatest. And I totally believe them. I just recommend that you DO NOT wander into a train station at night when
everything is closed and there are a bunch of squatters hanging around. Just take our word for it. We were dinking around at the kiosk when all of these men started getting closer and closer and closer. Some began asking questions about the bikes and where we were going. Eek double eek. The nice thing about traveling with a best friend is that you never need to actually say anything to communicate, eyeballs do all the work. With a couple of panicked glances we fled from that train station, frantically searching for anywhere, ANYWHERE to sleep that had a lock.

We finally found temporary refuge in a 2-star hotel with a extremely sweaty, handsome, Italian youth. Sweat droplets dripped onto the counter (why was he so sweaty?) as he apologetically told us that there was no room in the Inn. And they didn't even have a stable in the back for us either! However, this clammy Italian model helped us book another hotel on the other side of town and gave us some loving instructions in broken English. We wiped the sweat off our foreheads as we bid adieu (his sweatiness was contagious, people. why was he so sweaty??).

Out into the abyss of fear and terror we went. Our little map proved futile. All of these streets weren't on there! Which way is up? Down? Where are we? Why are there creepy squatter people near every corner and streetlight? WHERE ARE WE??? Time was passing and it was getting later and I started making plans to pull a Quasimodo and sleep on the cold stones of a cathedral. We biked up a mountain where these gated houses surrounded us and no hotels were in sight. In a last ditch effort to not sleep on the streets of this spooky city we ask Siri. We were close! 500 feet. 400 feet. 300 feet. 200 feet. 100 feet. "You have arrived at your destination."

But there was nothing there! Just a giant stone wall. What happens next is one of the most dramatic reactions Elise and I have had. My whole body crumpled as I shed bitter tears and whispered melodramatically, "we're doomed." Elise had some violent tension pent up and threw herself at the wall, hit the unyielding stone and wailed, "WE'VE BEEN SCAMMED!"

It seems pretty humorous months later just thinking about it. But honestly, we had never been so scared. I was praying like a mad woman for some miracle when I got a phone call from an Italian number. It was the non-existent hotel. A man asked if we were two women on bikes looking for a hotel. We looked up and saw a mysterious man on a balcony of some villa, watching us. It was the hotel. There was no sign or anything. Just a giant wall with a house behind it. The man came down and opened up the gate and I could have sworn that we were about to walk into some kind of brothel and become sex slaves.

Turns out it wasn't a brothel, just a cutesy B&B run by a college student who had a Cocker Spaniel and served us orange juice out of champagne glasses. Basically an overactive imagination leads to panic and disarray in Como.

Before Como became a death trap of horror.

The view from the Villa that was not a brothel.

I just want to clarify that I have a fanny pack underneath my shirt. I do not have a pooch. Believe me, please.

Rome, Italy
I've come to the conclusion that Rome makes everyone feel like an eternal teenager. I think it's from the fact that everything there is so old that it makes all of the inhabitants feel youthful. Everyone drives fast, honks incessantly, smoke for breakfast, day-drink, make out in public, and obsess over tiny handbags. It's a thousands-year-old high school.

When in Rome, I recommend taking the bus system over the subway. That is, unless you like an excess of humid body odor and breath. All I could do was mutter, "I hate humanity" over and over again. Too many people. Buses at least have windows.

It was a weird adjustment going from a bike tourist to a walking one. How do people do it? A couple of days of plodding from piazza to piazza was exhausting. My poor phalanges suffered. Luckily you can find gelato every 100 feet and we liberally took advantage of that. Don't skimp on gelato. There is no such thing as buying too much. Overall, I would say that Rome is worth going to see once in a lifetime. Will I go again? Probably not, but I did become temporarily enamored with it's energy and bustle. And now an absurd amount of pictures!

This was literally the most delicious pizza I have ever eaten to this day. The behemoth portion sizes were also a plus. Then there were men with accordions playing to people dancing in the streets and I was looking around for Gregory Peck because, is this Roman Holiday, or what?

A gelato, or two, or three a day.

This was one of the most magical nights of my life. We took cruiser bikes and rode around Rome with our Italian friend, dodging bubbles and selfie sticks and speeding through tiny back alleys with vines climbing up the walls. It was one of those moments that will forever be cemented in my head as perfection.

Ahh! This evening was so magical.

On bad days I look at this picture and relive every bite all over again.

The Pantheon was my favorite ruin in Rome. And it's free! And Raphael's bones are there! And there's a hole in the roof!

The Colosseum. Worth seeing once but I literally thought I was burning to death in there. SO HOT. AND CROWDED.

I wish I could act like one of those really hip travel bloggers and tell you what all these places are. Or their names. But I'm not hip and all I can tell you is that they are old buildings in Rome. #bloggingfail

This may be a ig'nant question but do they put a giant bucket under this hole when it rains?

My favorite part of the picture is that Asian lady totally rocking her new Facebook profile picture.

The Spanish steps! And me running out of interesting poses. Just leave me be to eat my apple!

Piazza di Venezia. Apparently Elise is running out of cool poses, too.

THOSE CLOUDS. Swoon.

Take a picture of me trying to figure out this map.

These poses....

Elise wondering why we spent so much money to look at a torture field.

The Vatican
If you don't mind waiting over two hours in line to get in, then I would recommend going, if only to sound pretentious when you're in a discussion about the Sistine Chapel.

I was trying to capture how many nuns and priests were roaming about.

Because walking with my hands behind my back (like the man behind me) wasn't art-snobbish enough.

Just forgive me for my clothes and and pose.

Before being reprimanded for sitting on the wall.

The Tyrrhenian Sea
THE ISLANDS. My goodness, the islands off the coast of Italy were the unicorns of the trip. They were these wild chunks of rock jutting up from the turquoise water. Whitewashed houses perched on the cliffs, looking over tiny wild flowers and white sand. It was paradise. We spent most of our time hanging off the bow of the boat as we soared over the waves and cliff jumping into the water. At night we'd stroll the quiet streets of the villages and eat gelato and drink steamed milk in the mornings as we watched millions of jellyfish float in the water. It's hard to describe those days without being annoying so I'll stop. But it was perfect. Okay, I'm done.