Today I went to visit two cities that are part of my literary imagination. While not known as traditional tourist “must see’s”, for me Verona and Padua are everything my 14 year old, slightly Shakespeare obsessed dreams were made of.

My morning was spent in Verona which appears in two Shakespeare plays. “Two Gentlemen of Verona” and “ Romeo and Juliet”. The feud between the Montagues and the Capulets is Shakespeare's most popular work – and is estimated to draw about 6 million tourists to the city each year. Yes, the city was touristy but not overwhelmingly so. There were still streets where one could wander and imagine the story of two devoted friends, Valentine and Proteus in “Gentleman” and their lively love entanglements.

In the present day, Verona is clean and cobbled and full of beautiful ally ways which were quiet. Wandering down one of these side streets I encountered a beautiful culinary sight.

Through a shop window I watched mesmerized a rather plump gentleman and his helper craft raviolis by the thousands with deft movements of the hands and flicks of the spoon with cheese and vegetable fillings. A few chairs and tables dotted the side walk in front of the establishment. A shaded portico hosted more people and chairs. As I wasn’t hungry I wasn’t bothered to keep walking on to the next scene. Later though, I doubled back to La Bottega della Gina for a taste, I had the sampler bowl of 12 types of tortelloni and tortellini which will probably live on in my dreams, for at least the next 10- 15 years.

Aside for a culinary lesson:

Tortelloni is a stuffed, keyhole-shaped pasta made by folding a round piece of dough in half over a filling, twisting the two ends together and binding the pasta into a circular shape. Popular in the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions of Northern Italy, Tortelloni are traditionally stuffed with a vegetarian mixture consisting of ingredients like ricotta cheese, leafy vegetables (like spinach and parsley), crumbled amaretti biscuits, or pumpkin purée.

Tortellini is a type of small, ring-shaped pasta traditionally stuffed with a combination of ground meat (like mortadella and prosciutto), egg, and parmesan cheese, and sealed in a circular fashion.

Between that simple but satisfying meal and the enchanting streets and squares I will say that I MUST visit Verona again!

Time stops for no woman, no matter how good the food is, so on I went to spend my evening in Padua.

One of my favorite Shakespearean plays, “The Taming of the Shrew”, is set in Padua. On the steamy July evening I was there, the town was quiet, devoid of tourists and seemed like a quaint place to live a nice modern life. Padua is home to the oldest Botanical Gardens in the world and the second oldest University in Italy (1222) . It was in Padua that Galileo taught mathematics and just happened to be teaching there while Shakespeare was writing “Shrew”. I can understand why this refined city drew such admiration and was at the center of so much although it is quite sleepy today, it is a gem of an Italian city and so worth the afternoon and late evening stroll.

Tomorrow I head to the floating city of VENICE! I can’t wait to share my impressions as I know Venice only through my imaginings guided by books and old movies. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow will bring.

Please share your comments below! If you have any travel recommendations, I’d love to hear them! Thank you for sharing my road trip with me!