A weekend in Naples

Ahhh….Napoli. Your people, your Vesuvius, your architecture and your pizza have stolen my heart. Your reputation may be tattered round the edges but your soul is pure and good and alive and I love you I love you I love you.

For me, Naples is the place I have been searching for. It boasts all the componants of the true Italy: energy, beauty and food. So let me begin with the latter and my solo search for the best pizza in the world. I was told on the train by a kind Neapolitan gentleman who didn’t speak a word of English, that such a search must begin and end at Da Michele’s pizzeria, for this was “bella pizza” – completely unbeatable. So it was with great joy that while being hopelessly lost after my first half hour in Naples, I stumbled across the pizzeria. In fact, I didn’t even have to read the sign, the queue of about twenty people outside the door told me that this was the place. Pushing through the crowd, I managed, with “permiso” after “permiso” to squeeze my way inside. Quite extraordinarily, Da Michele’s only offer two types of pizza: Marinara and Margherita. After choosing the latter I paid (four euros – an absolute bargain!) and left the place christened by critics as the ‘sacred temple of pizza’, clutching my sacred takeaway box. Now, desperate and with a lack of suitable benches, I did the unforgivable with my mouth wateringly delicious pizza: I ate it slice by slice, out of the box, perched on the edge of a flowerbed in a seedy backstreet. Oh dear. However, I didn’t care when passerby after passerby gave me strange look after strange look as they walked by, because I was in pizza heaven. Oh, the base, I cannot even begin to describe it, and the tomato sauce – heaven, heaven, heaven.

So began the start of my gastronomic adventure in Naples. First it was Da Michel’s pizza and then delicious homemade icecream; gnocchi eaten with a view of Vesuvius; followed the next day by a breakfast of sweet cannolo and pizza bianca for lunch.

Well, I can now hear the bambini downstairs, which means only one thing: that their siesta and my break is over. So hopefully tomorrow I will continue with the other two of the aforementioned jewels of Napoli: its energy and beauty.