It's Okay to Eat Ice Cream Twice a Day and Other Savvy Travel Tips

4. For Restaurant Recommendations, Drop the Guidebook and Follow Your Nose
Guidebooks are better at recommending hotels than restaurants. After all, restaurants change often; a cook gets fired and everything's different from the day the travel writer visited.

When I made my first trip to Paris during a summer break from college, many of the inexpensive restaurants noted in the respected Let's Go! guide were no longer in existence. I wanted to meet other travellers after days of exploring the city solo, but time after time, I met shuttered restaurants instead. One day at Shakespeare and Co. books, I met a French student who told me there are cafeterias that are subsidised by the government for students. All you need is an international student card to get in. By that point, after a week in Paris, I'd taken to eating the only things I could afford: baguettes and apples. The student led me to the cafeteria, where a whole meal of decent French food cost about the same as what I'd been paying for a baguette.

A few years later in Rome, I was having the same problem with Lonely Planet: Italy. So I just started walking and eventually noticed a wonderful aroma of garlic coming from a place in the artsy Trastevere neighborhood. It was called Ciak! It cost more than that student cafeteria in Paris, but after my travelling companion and I had drunk some Chianti and some of the fabulous meats grilled Tuscan-style, we were so happy that we strolled out and splurged on gelato for dessert.

Subrule d: It's Okay to Eat Ice Cream More Than Once a Day
Get over your at-home guilt. If you're travelling, you're walking a lot and burning calories. Ice-cream eaten at these times won't make you fat. It will only make you happy.