22 December 2021 | Before the heartwarming tales in Zagreb, Dubrovnik, and Budapest happened, there was Naples, where this 2021 Christmas trip, actually started. Initially had the plan solidly set to Barcelona for the holidays but had to drop it in exchange for a rare opportunity to go to Croatia, one of those redundantly underlined+bold+italicized items in my travel list, in which Naples was the most economical passageway at first glance. But with covid positivity rate shooting up for the nth wave, Italy has decided to impose stricter regulations which include mandatory pcr test before and after arrival, which was rather too much for my wallet to give and too painful for my nose to take.
But failures and inconveniences aside, Naples still delivered the goods, let alone the Pompei encounter which was already a winner in itself. Though, I will definitely remember Naples as the place where I had the best pizza in my 30 years of existence, truly the best 15 minutes of gastronomical indulgence. To sum it up, I have mixed feelings about Naples, bringing the best and worst at that. Naples was no less than that chaotic, dirty, noisy, invasively violent kind of neighbor occasionally knocking on your door to share hearty homemade food; annoying, but undoubtedly has the good items. Simply being there was inconvenient on so many levels, but surely there were more than enough flashes of brilliance to compensate. Naples is supposed to be a one-and-done affair, but for pizza's sake, I'm definitely willing to reconsider.
