Verona is about one hour drive from where we live and work. It is a very elegant town and full of historical buildings. Placed as it is at the entrance of the Brenner valley, that connects Northern Italy to Austria and Germany it has always been a capital for the succeeding ruling peoples in each time of its long, long history.

Not every time I go there do I visit the famous monuments, like the Arena, or spill a tear or two under the balcony of Juliet (great fiction, isn’t it?): we go there for shopping!

Via Mazzini starting from the Arena, ending at the Piazza delle Erbe, has the most elegant shops and as spring is approaching my wife Gabriella stops at every, I mean every, window for shoes, purses that seem to be a “must have” for the new season.

Luckily she is a sensible girl and most of the shopping is made with her eyes. It is a kind of activity that quickly bores me and over the years we found a reasonable compromise in splitting our ways after the first five or maximum six windows. This is when different interests come into place, why to insist?

Last Saturday I happily went alone, hunting for curious things in the narrow roads departing from Piazza delle Erbe. I found this beautiful Salumeria where a lot of prosciutto legs are hanging inside, while the front windows still keep the original fixtures and sign.This I what I call a window! And look at the inside. An Easter Chocolate Egg is just waiting to be bought! Going inside I could not resist buying thinly sliced prosciutto, craftily packed with three different types of paper: oily paper for the slices, a thin transparent divider, everything rolled and wrapped on Havana coarse paper. The perfume of this little pack accompanied me until we finally got home that evening… Gabriella did not bother; she was craving to show me her new shoes.