Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

Liz is in Italy, the divorce settled, the house and apartment given up, and her belongings in storage. As the medicine man predicted, she lost all her money and then got it back. Her publisher gave her an advance on the book she will write about her travels. She has a studio apartment in the “English Ghetto” of Rome visited by famous writers in the past. It is near the Spanish Steps and other remarkable historic sites.

She has her first meal in Rome—spaghetti, spinach, artichokes, zucchini blossoms, veal, and tiramisu, accompanied by warm bread and a bottle of wine. She walks home at eleven o’clock at night, lies down in bed, turns off the light, and waits for the crying or worry to set in. Instead, she falls asleep.

On Liz’s fourth day in Rome, in early September 2003, she tours the city—a clerk calls her bella, couples make out in public, and she visits her favorite fountain at the Villa Borghese: The father is a faun and the mother is a human; a baby with cloven hoofs sits between them, eating grapes. She finds “The Best Gelato” in Rome, and stops by three times that day, consuming four different flavors.