Gelato Fun

Dear SOON(ER) to be traveler,

When I think of gelato the first word that comes to mind is Italy. Nothing beats the authentic frozen Italian dessert. Gelato offers less sugar, fat and calories compared to regular ice cream. It is light, refreshing and utterly mouth-watering.

When it is scorching hot while walking around in Arezzo and my throat begins to feel parched, I look at my friends and we nod in agreement as we pass our favorite gelato place in Arezzo. Our ritual gelato runs after class have quickly become one of my favorite parts of the day.

Paradiso is the best gelato place in Arezzo that I have been to. They offer an array of flavors and provide free samples. If you are sweating from the Italian heat and are craving something refreshing, I highly recommend trying the flavors fragola, (strawberry), or lampone, (raspberry). Fragola offers a creamy consistency and the most refreshing strawberry flavor. Lampone, one of my favorite flavors, offers a sweet and tart raspberry taste.

The fruit-based flavors are perfect for a refreshing after-class pick-me-up. They aren’t as filling and tend to be lighter on the stomach since they are water-based. After class, I always look forward to my scoop of fragola gelato to cool me down from the heat.

After dinner when I am craving a sweet dessert, my favorite flavor to get is stracciatella. Stracciatella is a milk-based, vanilla ice cream infused with chocolate chips. This was the first gelato flavor I became obsessed with. It is Italy’s version of cookies of cream, which is one of my favorite ice cream flavors back home, but it is even better in Italy!

Stracciatella offers the perfect after-dinner flavor for when you are craving a sweet dessert, or as I call it, a palette cleanser. Even when I am not hungry, I will always leave room in my stomach for stracciatella.

As my time in Arezzo is coming to an end, I will savor each moment I have left and never pass down the opportunity to get gelato. My mouth is watering as I look forward to my next after-class gelato run, making me miss it already!

BOOMER!

• Shannon