Napoli e PATZO!
Naples is crazy. It’s loud and full of people and cars and overwhelming and there is literally no sense of order at all to this huge chaotic mess of a city. Everywhere people are gesturing, gesturing and speaking loudly and it is POURING buckets of rain and hail on us as we try to move past the sketchy and dirty and loud nature of the city. Stressed, overwhelmed, wet, and cold after going to the Archeological Museum via a long walk in the rain and metro, we made it to Via Tribunali for dinner. Looking like wet sad puppies, we were ushered in by no-smiling waiters into this tiny pizza place. The magic of pizza. This place was owned clearly by a bunch of brothers, and I got a pizza alla bufala (basically margherita pizza but with buffalo mozzarella) and it was full of melty cheesey goodness. The sauce was just right and it was thin crust but not too thin and it was cooked to perfection. I watched them put it into their big brick oven. Let me tell you it was not Bertucci’s pizza. This was wonderful and I just felt my anxiety melt away like the cheese. Even though Naples is crazy, the people we’ve met and talked to here are already some of the warmest we’ve encountered (except for the pizza guys. No smiles there but that’s supposedly their shtick). Our taxi driver certainly cheered a couple of wet and scared girls up. I think of Neopolitan traffic to be like that scene in Mulan when the grandmother closes her eyes and tests the cricket’s luck. There are very few crosswalks and the ones that do exist don’t have the lights so you basically just have to hope that you don’t get run over as you dash across bumper to bumper traffic with scooters buzzing by in between. Everywhere horns are honking and people are shouting and gesturing. Naples is interesting, overwhelming, loud, crazy. But the best pizza I've ever had, which is worth a lot to me.