"Retail Space Available"

Today started off wonderfully. We got up early, had a breakfast of frosted mini wheats, and then set off for the grocery store a couple of blocks away. There we found bananas at a price of 33 cents per pound, so we bought six for a grand total of 74 cents! We also found some tomato sauce for 99 cents, which was a great bargain. So far we have spent about $15 on food, and we have enough to last us for weeks! We returned to the apartment to research and plan for the rest of the day. We prepared a pasta lunch (of course), which we estimated cost us less than a dollar. We then journeyed downtown to find our first gelateria.


The subway ride went smoothly, and before we knew it, we arrived at 14th St. We had chosen the closest gelateria on our list, which was said to be located on 7th Ave. between 17th and 18th streets. As we approached this location, we noticed that the neighborhood was calm and friendly, and we made a mental note to write about that in our review. We turned onto 7th Ave. and started walking up towards 18th St., looking at all of the stores that we passed. None was the gelateria. Up ahead we saw a large construction site. We checked the address once again--where the gelateria was supposed to be, there was now a large hole in the ground. Luckily, a sign advertised the retail space available, so if we ever want to open our own gelateria, we know where there's a spot! One down, literally, we moved on to the next on our list.





As we got closer to the next gelateria, we noticed that there was almost no one on the streets, at least by New York standards. We wandered around a little until we saw the address we were looking for: 75 9th Ave. Almost as soon as we walked in the door, we noticed a table where free cookies were being given away. Not ones to turn down free food, we each took one. A little further down the long hallway was a table with free brownies. We each took one of those as well. We could hear live music from even further down, so without knowing exactly where we were going, we kept walking. It was after we saw the free cake samples and soup samples that we realized something was going on. We walked past the band that we had heard and almost ran into a man on stilts, dressed in a clown suit, who was handing out Mardi Gras beads, which was weird, since it certainly wasn't Mardi Gras.

We still hadn't seen the gelateria we were looking for, so we kept walking. Free food was everywhere! We reached a small Italian grocery store called Buon Italia, which wasn't what we had been looking for, but we looked inside and they sold gelato! Finally we were in luck!

The gelato was delicious. The official review will come at our presentation on June 1st, so we hope to see you there! Despite the setbacks, it was a great start to our project (and we were even able to make all of the free food into our dinner)!