High School gym class
My first stop was Naples—or Napoli, as the locals correctly call it—the original, unapologetic version reminded me of High School gym class.
Fast-paced, intense, a little rough around the edges, and absolutely unforgettable history.
The history of pizza began in antiquity, as various ancient cultures produced flatbreads with several toppings. Pizza today is an Italian dish with a flat dough-based base and toppings, with significant Italian roots in history.
A precursor of pizza was probably the focaccia, a flatbread known to the Romans as panis focacius, to which toppings were then added. Modern pizza evolved from similar flatbread dishes in Naples, Italy, between the 16th and mid-18th centuries.
The word pizza was first documented in 997 CE in Gaeta[4] and successively in different parts of central and southern Italy. Furthermore, the Etymological Dictionary of the Italian Language explains the word pizza as coming from dialectal pinza, ‘clamp’, as in modern Italian pinze, ‘pliers, pincers, tongs, forceps’. Their origin is from Latin pincere, ‘to pound, stamp’.
I had pizza every day that I was in Italy and even had a couple two a day!!
The below was one of my favorites near Vatican City. The Chef will make pizzas on massive sheets and then place them in the window for display. Once you decide on a flavor or three, in my case, on this day, in the top left. They take a pair of scissors, cut to your desired size and weight it for the amount.
Below is fried pizza—basically a calzone that made better life choices and went into the fryer instead of the oven.
The second photo is my first meal after landing in Naples.
Stromboli is my favorite, so this one felt less like a meal and more like a reunion.
The rest?
Just random pizza stops along the way.
No plan.
No regrets for eating and not even being hungry!
Yummy!! 
I definitely ate my share of pizza throughout Italy, especially Naples.
Every now and then I’d think, “Maybe I should order something else…”
And then immediately decide—
nope.
When you’re in the birthplace of pizza, branching out feels less like curiosity and more like betrayal.
You tell ’em, Boss!