Today, on my walk toward Neptune's Fountain, I passed this little gelato shop--Gelateria La…read moreRomana--and kept going. But I stopped in my tracks because I saw a line wrapped up 50+ people deep, all waiting just to get inside and order.
Now it's day two in Rome and I still hadn't had any gelato, even though I've walked past what feels like a hundred shops. So what would a fat man from Alabama do? Turn right back around, of course--because nothing says "this is probably good" like a crowd stacked up like cordwood waiting for ice cream.
I finally make it up to the counter and the young guy looks at me and says in English, "What do you want?"
Well... I can't pronounce half of what I'm looking at, so I just show him a picture of his own menu I had snapped a minute earlier. He smiles, reads it out loud, and then asks, "What size?"
At that point my brain is a mess, so I mumble "medium" and point at the cup sitting by the register. One problem down.
Then I move into the next line--about a dozen people ahead of me--and when it's finally my turn again, I just point at my receipt like, "It's on there somewhere, I think." I can't read Italian, so I'm fully operating on faith at this point.
The guy looks up and says, louder this time: "What flavor?"
Flavor? That was not the question I was prepared for.
So I point back at the picture again and say, "Whatever that is... I want that one."
He scoops it up, loads it into the cup, and sends me on my way.
Now comes the real test--taste it--but there are people everywhere, so I grab a quick photo first, because priorities.
First bite? Hallelujah. That was the moment. That gelato hit and I just kept walking down the sidewalk like a man who somehow figured out how to survive ordering ice cream in Italy.
Seriously, it was excellent. And if I get turned around again like today, I already know where I'm going back.
