Poor little Napoli. It gets such a bad rap. Ok, so there's trash and dog poop everywhere! But if you don't look down, you don't even notice!! We LOVED Naples. Reasons include the following: 1) The buildings and whatnot of the city itself. 2) The people. 3) Pizza. 4) Pizza. 5) Pizza. 6-1,000,000) PIZZA.
Naples is big and winding and colorful. At every turn, there's something old and cool. It was such eye candy. For example, our hostel shared an alleyway with this building.
Some awesome old red church.
People were so fantastic there! Even on the train down from Rome to Naples, some lady on the train with some friends offered us this delicious looking dessert. She didn't speak a lick of English but insisted we take some, I'm assuming knowing we were tourists. It was delicious! But that's just how everyone in Naples was, sincerely excited to share their city and their food. Everyone was so enthusiastic even though little English was spoken. It all came off so sincere too. People were enthusiastic in other cities, but you could tell it came from a sincere desire to make a sale and not a sincere desire to share something with you.
Okay. Let's talk pizza. Naples is where pizza started. I felt like I was on a pilgrimage to a holy land. We ate SO. MUCH. PIZZA. We actually didn't eat anything else while we were in that city. Oops. But one pizza stands out above the rest. The pizza place we wanted to go to was closed, so we made our way to this other restaurant. Across the street from Trianon da Ciro is La Antica Pizzeria da Michele. The latter was featured in the movie Eat, Pray, Love, so it's lines are always out the door. Reviewers say that Trianon is just as good if not better. The two restaurants are long time rivals. We went to Trianon expecting it to be really good.
It wasn't just good, it was transcendent. With Clayton as my witness, that pizza changed our lives. I'm not even exaggerating when I say it was so good, we almost teared up. Like this pizza actually made us both emotional. I would travel to Naples just to eat that pizza. The crust was thin, but thick enough to give stability to each slice. It was crunchy and chewy all at the same time. It was salty and freshly made and perfectly stretched and kneaded. The tomato sauce was so fresh and sweet. The cheese perfectly melted and the highest quality. And the whole thing was drizzled in the most delicious freshly pressed olive oil. I'm telling you, I left that restaurant a different person than I entered.
I love Naples.
Pizza.
The best pizza on earth.
More pizza.
Mt. Vesuvius! This is what I mean by cool buildings and views at every turn.
Random fortress on a random street.
Cool abandoned churches everywhere.
Dog hot. Lol.
My first gelato was also the best gelato I had. The gelato shop lady was sooooo sweet. I grabbed a scoop of some local flavor which was basically nutella on steroids. SO GOOD.
A local dessert called sfogliatella. I just called it delicious.
Napoli is where I also finally did laundry! So that was good.
We went to the archaeological museum to see all the ruins from Pompeii. There were so many giant statues. I don't know why, but I love the gigantic ones. They're just really impressive!
Impressed.
Impressed.
All these cool sarcophagi were just sitting outside!
My favorite part was the mosaics. So incredible.
Mosaic pillars.
Just to give you an idea of how insanely detailed these are, check this out:
This is a hoof. Do you see how teeny tiny the tiles are? How many tiles go into making that hoof?
Now it is backed up a little.
Here's the whole horse scene.
Here's the whole piece. Can you pot the hoof? On your screen, it'll be about an inch or two left of my head toward the center. Isn't that wild???
