Ciao Napoli!

So I'm just going to go ahead and start out with this. The pizza in Naples is incredible. Okay, you're skeptical, I know. Pizza is pizza. The difference between bad pizza and amazing pizza is very marginal, right? Wrong. You suffer from the ignorance that I suffered from up until this past Saturday. I doubted that any single pizza could be so good that it was leagues above the next best pizza I've ever had because they all taste relatively the same. Alright, I'll get to the point. The pizza in Naples was the best that I have ever had. Not that a mere picture can do it any justice, but I'll post one for you anyways.



So the pizza was at a restaurant called Brandi. Although historians like Herodotus discussed pizza in his writings from the 5th century BCE, it was Brandi that invented the Margarita Pizza, yup. In 1780, this place started making pizzas, one of them was for Queen Margherita (yes, OMG, that's where they got the name!). The pizza was so extraordinary that she wrote the chef a letter congratulating him on making such a desirable pizza (you can still see the letter in the restaurant). Now, still under family ownership relating to the original chef, this place is the spot in Naples. [Source: My recollection of the Brandi Menu.] We got there early right as they opened at Noon but the place filled up in a snap.


So you're probably wondering why I wasted half my blog talking about pizza and not Naples. Sorry Naples, but you weren't very impressive otherwise. By far the dirtiest city I have ever seen, see below, and overrun by the Mafia (we got out before sunset, don't worry), Naples was really a letdown.




This was a typical scene throughout the city. Beer cans in fountains, dog poo everywhere on the sidewalk, trash dumpsters well overflowing. Bleh. There was a neat church and a couple medieval castles but other than that, the visit was not very eventful. We went through a travel agency for college students so we got to meet some other kids from Rome which was fun.Oh, but the views of Mt Vesuvius (it didn't erupt while I was there, phewf) and the Mediterranean from the top of the coastal castle were incredible.