He tempted himself with thoughts of sweetbreads and fresh cream pastries, and took the stairs as quickly as his bulk would allow.

Massive Devair Burkenhamn, First Marshal of the N'Taian Planetary Navy, stood alone a few steps away, nibbling at a cream pastry and watching the richly garbed dancers.

They took up three tables, drank iced coffee, gobbled cheese toast and cream pastries, and filled the tiny restaurant with cigarette smoke and gossip.

"That has not been my experience," she said, reaching for a rich cream pastry.

Tony Amendola is excellent as Domenico, the preening, tough-talking lover who has a heart no harder than the cream pastries on which he has made his fortune.

Especially when her team was gorging on cream pastries, strawberries the size of golf balls, and a couple of pigs' worth of real bacon.

She came with him to the door, leaving Rosamund dreamily stuffing herself with cream pastries.

"I didn't do it on purpose; the crumbs just accidentally fell off," Paul Castio, a tourist from Verona, protested, holding up the remains of a cream pastry.

Shop windows filled with the ordinary fascinate us - door locks and bolts of serious twine, confections of baby clothes as exquisite as whipped cream pastries, hams lined up like soldiers.

Some have even walked into one of its landmarks, the Bar dell'Amizia, famous for its rich cream pastries, to ask directions.