PIZZA

AN OFFER YOU CANNOT REFUSE

The best pizzeria in the world is run by the Italian Mafia. I am sure of it. 

The head honcho, an ancient white-haired Italian with watery blue eyes, sits at the front desk and smiles knowingly at me. When I ask him whether I should take a ticket with a number, he only nods and gestures towards the young men shoveling pizza in and out of a hot hole. He is definitely Mafia material. Do you take card? He shakes his head, still smiling. Cash only then? Uh-huh. Mafia. 

This pizza place may be a perfect reflection of the city in which it hides - Naples: dirty and rude, like a child who has wronged you, and instead of apologising, pulls the fingers at you and laughs. The streets of Naples seem to erupt here and there in splashes of torn-up cobblestones. The pizzeria itself is a scene of chaos. Fight your way through people and dogs to pick up a numbered ticket, and wait until your number is yelled out at the street; or order to-go and stand by the blazing hot furnaces.

But boy, is the product of that chaos a beautiful one! There is one type of pizza served here: Margarita. And you can get it with either one helping of cheese, or two. The pizza base is doughy, salty, and a little fire-charred around the edges. The sauce, a family recipe, leaks olive-oily goodness all over the cardboard box, and smells divine, scattered with blobs of mozzarella. But the best part? The way the small sprigs of basil in the middle of the pizza permeate the whole with an intense flavour.

Ah Naples, where pizza is king, and one can yell into the phone while driving one-handed between un-laned traffic. 

If you want to try some of the best pizza on earth,
head to L'ANTICA PIZZERIA DA MICHELE

THE BLUE GROTTO

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Mermaids, mantled in mazarine

Fancy sees;

The ocean-sirens, and her, their queen

Of music-charméd memories.

Still breathes the ancient Parthenope.

O'er waters of modern Napoli

Her melodies.

Blue, - blue, - beautiful and intense, -

Everywhere:

Spirits, or some one spirit immense,

Breathing and burning in the air;

Making an ardent presence felt,

Till the rocks seemed as like to melt

In the glare.

- WILLIAM GIBSON, THE GROTTO AZZURO

Blue WONDERS AND DISTANT MEMORIES

The feeling of sea water rocketing into my sinuses - sharper than salt and vinegar chips. 

Barefoot children shouting the word medusa - a swarm of jellyfish. 

An irate group of boatmen, who swear, and curse one another, and sing as they row their dinghies into the blue grotto. 

A cave that is lit from below. The ceiling is dark and the water is illumined like blue flames.

Setting up our hammock on a flimsy metal guard, on a cliff by the sea. Only to have the whole thing collapse in a heap. 

MOUNT SOLARO

---

Above the island of Capri, everything melts into a dream of pure, sparkling blue. The sky is newly washed. The sea shifts and sways. The world breathes out.

White scudding water. A boat far below.

A lizard scatters across the rocks, clinging to the vertical crevices.

The atmosphere is composed of 98% warmth.

And the view rolls on with a sigh into blue mountains.
Way up here, yellow budded flowers tingle. 

We lose the path for the forest.
Then the forest for a crop of stones.
Then a ledge above a cliff
- we walk on - 
to the edge of existence. 

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