We arrived in Verona exactly one week into our adventure.

We’d booked a cheap B&B by the train station so we wouldn’t have far to lug our backpacks. It was mid-afternoon, so we checked in, dropped our bags, and headed back out in the direction of the city’s center, guided by an imposing slab of bricks that made up what was left of the original city wall.

Verona is an enchanted garden where the deeper into the city center you climb, the more colorful and tightly packed the architecture blooms. The buildings are unique varieties of blooming shrubs with pretty, perfect, balcony buds. Here, along with wooden shutters, nearly all of the windows are fitted with a private balcony that homeowners drape with greenery and blooms - a garden inside a garden.

First order of business: We were both in need of a hit of sugar and caffeine. La pasticceria time!

After a week in Italy, we’d learned the sure sign of a great pastry shop is a disorganized string of animated old men out the door. We walked until we came to such a place, ordered the server’s choice of recommended pastries, and helped ourselves to a table outside that conveniently opened up just in time for our coffees to arrive.

The favorite: An almond cookie filled with jam. When I asked the server what is was called she said “Almond Cookie with Jam.” Alright then!

After our pastries had been nibbled down to a few sticky crumbs, we diagnosed ourselves as recovered from travel haze and ready to switch into full explorer mode. We’d only have one night in Verona, so we wanted to see as much as possible in our short window.

We’d landed in Verona out of necessity. We wanted to take the train through the Alps during the best daylight hours (there aren’t many this time of year in the North) to enjoy the view and Verona seemed to be the best location logistically to make that work. We didn’t see a single fellow American, but the city was packed with European tourists. It was a Sunday after all and conveniently located for Europeans who want to “spend the weekend in Italy” without dealing with the hubbub of Italy’s more popular cities.

Half a day’s travel from Verona could easily land you pretty far into Central Europe.

We wove through the narrow streets taking in the beautiful architecture and the river, but as the daylight dwindled into dusk, we decided to lose the crowds and venture a ways out of the city up a hill in the distance so we could take in a view of Verona at sunset.

It was a clear day, and the lower the sun got in the sky, the more vibrant each building became with basic yellows, pinks, creams, and greens turning into the sherbet shades of summer dahlias.

We climbed the equivalent of forty flights of stairs up a cobblestone path exactly the width of one horse cart with stone walls on either side bursting with ferns, moss, and even a few wild rose bushes. From tiptoes, we could make out the mansions and vacation homes of the city’s wealthy. It smelled closer to home with a mountain range of fir trees signaling the most vegetation we’d seen in a week.

We made it to the top of the San Leonardo hill where a 1950s cathedral and shrine sits overlooking the city. Santurario della Madonna di Loourdes is a hilltop church housed in a former fort. The church wasn’t all that spectacular after all of the centuries-old cathedrals we’d been in over the past week, but the view was nothing short of heavenly. From up high, you can see how the sparkling Adige River carves through the city, jutting to and fro in no orderly fashion. The colorful houses and shops were filtered exclusively in gold tones at this light. We stayed well after the sun was over the horizon, watching the buttery yellows of architecture fade to fiery oranges before cooling into warm lavenders and sleepy blues.

We took the long way down the hill, with eternal vineyards scaling the hillsides all around us. The dew came in with an almost mysterious mist about it and the city was so silent that it conjured up funny stories from Alex and my childhoods that were berried so deep in our memories that neither of us had ever heard them from each other before. After six years and hundreds of longwinded conversations together, it’s a rare and exciting gift to learn something new.

And that’s what traveling does to a person, yes? You’re making new memories and learning new things about yourself and how you see the world, but there’s also something in climbing a down forty-plus flights of cobblestones with darkness and quiet settling over an ancient city that helps you see parts of your life you’ve already lived, but diferently.

The tourists don’t stay out nearly as late in Verona as everywhere else we’d been. The stroll along the river and through the compact streets was ours.

We crossed the fortified Ponte Scaligero by lamplight. The red brick bridge was built in the first century AD, bombed in WWII, and rebuilt using as many parts of the original structure as possible. You wouldn’t guess by looking at it, but Verona was one of the most bombed cities in Northern Italy during WWII due to its strategic marshaling yard, and in 1945 fleeing Germans destroyed every one of her bridges. When the Ponte Scaligero was first built, its main arch featured the world’s largest span at almost 50 meters. You could just imagine the intimidation a Medieval army would feel riding up to it with all of those dramatic spikes and the sheer size of it!

After the bridge, we feasted on two types of the region's specialty kinds of pasta recommended by the server. I’m not sure we ever really knew exactly what we were eating other than that one had pumpkin in it and the other had beef. Both were delicious!

Gelato time rolled around and we wandered back across the river in search of a famed shop that Alex had already sampled earlier in the day. It was getting colder by then, but it was well worth the hike! Gelateria Ballini Verona made one of the best dark chocolate gelatos of Alex’s entire much researched gelato pilgrimage.

We wandered across a few other bridges, peeped into a handful of churches, and found ourselves back at the B&B for a full night of rest. In the morning, we were only somewhat upset to realize our booking at the bed and breakfast… came without breakfast. This meant we could venture back out into the city for croissants! And we did.

With less than one full day in Verona, we couldn’t see all of the best bakeries, but the place we landed ended up being home to my favorite pistachio croissant of my own “pastry pilgrimage.” Caffè Borsari’s croissants are perfectly flaky on the outside, soft and airy on the inside, and baked with (not filled after!) a decadent paste of pistachio inside. Fresh squeezed OJ, cocoa-topped cappuccino, and a chocolate croissant for Alex. Heaven!

After our breakfast we decided to take in the Ponte Scaligero again, but by daylight. Sunrise was still upon us, so the red bricks almost glowed in it! The hoards of tourists from Sunday had either left in the evening or were still sleeping. We almost had the whole city to ourselves. We walked around the parts of the city center that had been too crowded the night before and we counted endless beautiful balconies!

Shakespeare got his inspiration for Romeo and Juliet from visiting Verona. The abundance of balconies surely would have the capacity to conceive a tragic romance!

Another thing Verona is famous for is its ancient Roman amphitheater, now used for the opera. Verona’s Arena is the third largest surviving Roman amphitheater in the world, dwarfed only by Rome’s Coliseum and Falerone’s Faleria. It’s there in the heart of the city without the high rails that protect Rome’s much more popular theater. Its white and pink limestone gives it an especially fond character that is only enhanced by the experience of seeing it at sunrise.

We grabbed our bags and checked out of the B&(not)B at 10 AM and caught the train to Munich. Alex is a geography buff, so a train ride through the Alps has always been high on his bucket list. We’d been strictly to riding the bus up to this point, so it was nice to experience the ride through the mountains with a bit more breathing space. We both had a row to ourselves and no one around to judge our gaping out the window at the enormous snow-covered mountains, roaring waterfalls, princess-worthy castles, and yes, cows.

The sky was clear, the trees were ablaze with autumn, and the gentle hum of the train on her tracks made you almost too sleepy and content to keep looking out the window! I read my book slowly, taking a glance out the window with each new page for the five-hour journey.

I was reading the 1930 bestseller, Exile, by Warwick Deeping. The story revolves around a group of English expatriates from all walks of life who have gone “into exile” in the Italian Riviera. I’d picked it up in a thrift shop when I was 18 and had promised myself that I would only allow myself to read it on a trip to Italy. It’s not a light read and the antique thing was not in the greatest condition for cramming into a backpack, but after all these years of neglecting it, I had to bring it. Despite the distance of 90 years and hundreds of miles from where I was reading the book, it was very satisfying to match the sights, foods, and people we’d encountered on our vacation to those on the brittle pages in my hands. Swap out the fashion and the book could have very easily been set in 2023. I always appreciate the opportunity to be reminded that nothing is new under the sun.

I have to admit that I enjoyed the book just as much as the scenery. Ah, Winter. Another sunset was upon us already, painting the snow-capped mountains and the final pages of my book a buttery orange. I tucked the book back into my pack and nodded to Alex as we pulled into the station at dusk.

The train ride was as spectacular as we’d imagined. We’d not put any anticipation into Verona beforehand, as we sort of turned up there on a last-minute whim, but it turned out to be as lovely as the much-anticipated train ride. Perhaps experiencing Verona exclusively at sunset and sunrise had something to do with it.