Naples Ahoy!

After four months + approximately two years of dreaming of real Naples pizza, we find ourselves only a week away from paradise. We promised ourselves that as soon as we got our first paycheck we would take a day trip into Naples for some world-famous pie, and to prove to ourselves that we were serious we bought our train tickets last week. The itinerary is still sketchy; we know that we want to eat at the famous Da Michele restaurant (which is near the train station), and for dinner we have selected another restaurant to feed our need for the famous Naples seafood fare: Ristorante Bellini.

Da Michele is famous not for its looks or atmosphere (it’s supposedly quite dingy and unbecoming) but for its perfection of Naples style pizza, which they‘ve been working on since 1870. They only make two types of pizza: margherita (tomato, bazil and mozzarella) and marinara (tomato, garlic and oregano). We plan to order one of each for our lunch, and if they’re as good as they say we might order more.

Ristorate Bellini is said to feature seafood as fresh as the morning catch, and pasta on a grand scale (how can you beat that?), and so we’ve chosen it as our dinner destination and one of us will surely order the vermicelli with clams and mussels. We don’t know much else about what they serve, so the surprise will surely be as exciting as the food.

For the time we will be required to waste between meals, we plan to stay near the train station and explore what Naples has to offer in that section of town. If you have been following any Italian news you would have heard that gangs (the mafia type) are at war in Naples, which at first deterred us from taking this trip at our scheduled time, but Dante so wisely reminded us that it may actually be safer now with the extra police in the area. So the trip is on as scheduled, and we are well aware of the dangers of pick-pockets and thieves in this charming city, so we are only bringing the few bucks we’ll need to eat, and of course our Chuck Norris-thief-stopping-moves.