BOLOGNA, Italy — You can't see Bologna in two days.

But you can take a big bite out of it.

That's what my friend Bonnie Friedman and I did during a side trip from our home base in Venice to this northern Italian city famed for its food, if not its sights.

The place's nickname is "La Grassa" ("The Fat One"), and if we'd stayed there a few days longer, it would have been my nickname, too.

In a somewhat hectic two-night stay, we touched lightly on the city's historic attractions: Piazza Maggiore, the central square of the old town with its rather randy Fontana del Nettuno (Neptune's Fountain), emblematic of Bologna; the side-by-side Torre Asinelli and Torre Garisenda, needle-like towers representative of an architectural feature that once dominated the city, built by the elite to illustrate their wealth; and a couple of museums (she to the MAMbo Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, and me to the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, the National Picture Gallery).

Bologna is, by the way, like many Italian cities, very convenient and walkable; no need to rent a car. There are a number of hotels within easy reach of the Bologna Centrale train station and most tourist sites are no more than a 15- or 20-minute walk from this transit hub. (We heard, however, that the train station district is unsafe at night; try to arrange your travel for day.)

We shopped a bit. Given that this is a university town, home to many young adults, the commercial scene is a bit more hip. In addition to all the astronomically priced designers you see in Milan, Venice and Rome, there are many lower-priced shops — such as H&M and Zara, European chains somewhere between Ross and Macy's in price, quality and style — as well as edgy boutiques.

But basically, we ate. In the space of a few compact blocks just east of Piazza Maggiore, we browsed bakeries and cheese shops and fish stalls and produce stands. We nibbled fresh breadsticks and shared pastries. We took pictures of food. We pored over my friend's lovingly compiled restaurant guide. When we came away, finally, my notebook was grease-stained and smudged with tomato sauce.

Which helped to dispel my first impression of Bologna, which was not good. After the incomparable beauty of Venice, I was distinctly unimpressed by Bologna's rather gray and grimy front as we took a walk around town after arriving by train in mid-afternoon. But Bonnie had a plan. The plan was gelato.

CHILLIN'

She'd read about a shop. (Bonnie has always read about a shop, no matter where you touch down with her.) It's called Gelateria Gianni and was said to have some of the best gelato in Italy. How, in a place where ALL the gelato is stellar, does one judge that, I wonder?

So we wandered cluelessly off the main drag of Bologna's old town, Via dell' Independenza, a block or so down Via Monte Grappa, and found the shop, which has rather the air of an old-fashioned soda fountain — Ferrell's with an accent. As with most gelato places in Italy, at Gianni's you can choose a cup or cone, and two monstrously generous scoops count as a single; most people mix flavors.

I forget what Bonnie chose — pistachio, perhaps — but I got chocolate.

Ponder, for a moment, your top five chocolate experiences. Got 'em? OK, I'll put that first slurp of this chocolate gelato cone up against all five. I nearly swooned. It was, I told Bonnie, like eating frosting, one of my guiltiest pleasures. She countered, after taking a bite, that it was better than any frosting she'd ever had.

This is what is so amazing about the gelato (gelati?) of Italy: The flavors are true. If you order strawberry, you'll taste strawberry, not some too-sweet, chemically created pastiche of strawberries. We tried to have a gelato every day while there, even though something about the richness of dairy and sugar together wreaks havoc on my digestion and I could never finish even a single serving. But the pain was worth it.

That night, after a lot of walking and a little rest (this is the norm when you're in Europe), we went to dinner at Al Cambio, a quiet, chic contemporary restaurant a few minutes out of downtown (although a few minutes cost 10 euros in a cab — plus tip, nearly $20).

There, I had my first experience of tortellini en brodo, stuffed pasta in broth, as it's made in Bologna. A case can be made that tortellini is the signature food of Bologna. You see the little crowns of stuffed pasta everywhere, lined up in golden rows in the windows of pasticcheria (bakeries) and salumeria (delis), ready to buy and take home to pop into bubbling water or broth or to bathe in sauce.

If one goes to Rome to see the Colosseum and to Venice to ride in a gondola, one without question goes to Bologna to eat tortellini. And one is not disappointed.

Next day, Bonnie ordered tortellini al pomodoro at Ristorante da Nello al Montegrappa, just off Via dell' Independenza, a venerable bistro with walls lined with celebrity photos and waiters who looked as though they'd worked there since Pavarotti was a pup. I cadged a bite and was so jealous I almost stopped speaking to her (even though my polenta with fresh seasonal mushrooms was also great).

Bonnie and I made a concentrated study of tortellini while we were there and concluded that the secret is in the size — no larger than the end of a woman's thumb — and the correct proportion of fresh-made pasta to stuffing. This creates a seductive combination of chewiness and silkiness, a delicacy you rarely encounter in this country. It is not your dried stuff from the blue box, let me tell you.

I don't recall much of the rest of the meal at Al Campo — euphoria-induced memory loss — but I know it was near perfect. It was also interesting to watch the place fill up with locals a good hour or two after most Islanders would have had their dinners and gone home; people eat late in Italy.

BROWSING SHOPS

Our trip to Bologna really only began for us on Day 2 when, following a sketchy plan based on an article in Saveur magazine, we went in search of the fleshpots of Bologna — the food markets.

On our way, we stumbled on Regna della Forma, a 76-year-old formaggeria (cheese shop) that consists of a window, a glass case and a wall of scarred wooden shelves stacked with wheels of parmesan so big you could mount them on a Mack truck. The only cheese they sell is Parmigiano Reggiano of various ages. I bought a hunk of 5-year-old cheese — grainy, crumbly, butter-yellow stuff with a scent straight from heaven (16 euros a kilo or about $15 a pound, and cheap at any price). This we took back to Venice and dined on for days.

No plastic wrap here, by the way. The cheese, as with most cold cuts you buy in Italy, comes loosely wrapped in paper, often plain white but sometimes imprinted with the name of the shop or its logo. I made a collection of these for my scrapbook.

Following our noses, we zigzagged through narrow streets and alleys, pausing for a perfect coffee and pastry delightfully presented on real china at the busy Caffeteria Terzi espresso bar on Via Gugliemo Oberdan (where I got scolded for taking pictures without permission).

In this district, along Via Oberand, Via Pescherie Vecchie, Via Caprarie east of Piazza Maggiore, we found displays of produce, fish, flowers, meats and baked goods and a couple of amazing kitchen supply shops that had us snapping innumerable pictures, exclaiming, bending to sniff the fragrances and wishing, oh, wishing, for a kitchen in which to cook.

Threading our way among the stout ladies in their carpet slippers tottering under the weight of their cloth shopping bags, we found a pastry and pasta shop called Paolo Atti et. Figlie that is a step back in time. You browse the glass cases of cookies and baked goods, fresh pasta and polenta cakes, indicate what you want, see it packaged up, get a receipt, walk up to the lady sitting at the high desk by the door, pay and then return to pick up your prettily wrapped package. Both of us bought cookies that would sustain us throughout our trip.

EAT OUT, EAT IT UP

At another bakery, I wandered in just out of curiosity and felt I ought to buy something, so picked up a half kilo of housemade sesame breadsticks that turned out to be the best I've ever experienced. They would be my midnight snack for days (and the first thing I think I actually ordered all in Italian, all by myself).

Whatever you do in Bologna, visit this bustling little neighborhood — but go in the morning; most places close at mid-day and many don't reopen. Even your photographs will be positively edible.

We had altogether about five meals in Bologna, all of them stellar, even the "comes with" breakfast buffet at the Starhotels Excelsior where we stayed (a sort of W hotel, very modern and sleek, right across the street from the train station; we got an online steal for 90 euros a night). The shaved, fried pancetta put me off American bacon forever.

My favorite moment was at Trattoria Anna Maria, a time-worn family restaurant on Via delle Bella Arti, where we had gone to experience old-style traditional Bolognese cooking. It was there that the waiter — a merry, wee man who looked just like my Uncle Manuel and was a joker like Uncle, too — growled at me. Literally growled. Back in his throat. He'd noticed that I wasn't eating my bracciola di maiale, a succulent pork chop, and was letting me know it was time to get back to the business of tucking in, instead of gazing about me at the celebrity pictures on the wall.

They take uneaten food seriously in Italy: You order it, you eat it. Though he was joking, of course, he so intimidated me that I secreted the remainder of my chop in a folded-up map, the only paper I had, and took it back to the hotel. (And finished it there, too; it was unbelievably good even cold and gnawed off the bone.)

Come to think of it, the service in Bologna was some of the friendliest we had, probably because, unlike Venice, this workaday city isn't plagued by tourists, allowing them to retain their aloha spirit, so to speak.

Perhaps, on another trip, I'll learn to appreciate Bologna's architectural attractions, its museums and its intellectual life — much praised to me by Italians I talked to. But, for me, a foodie adventurer, Bologna was, as Hemingway might have said, a moveable feast.