LA Cruiser 88 Travel: Cruise Day #12

Good Morning Napoli!

It’s déjà vu — we’re back for a second visit to this vibrant city! There’s a 30% chance of showers this afternoon, but we’re banking on the 70% that it won’t rain.

Today we’re going to lunch with a few crew members. Stefan, the Head Sommelier onboard (and a former Maître d’ on NCL), has been raving about a small spot in town that serves pizza fritta — fried pizza! He describes it as similar to a calzone, but fried instead of baked, filled with mozzarella and marinara sauce. Hey, we’ll try almost anything once!

Before meeting up, we ran into our friends Jill and Mike and caught up since the last time we saw them.

Soon the gang arrived — Stefan, Elvis (another Sommelier), and Lazar, our Assistant Waiter — and off we went. Stefan’s “secret” location turned out to be right on the main street. It’s tiny and easy to miss; we’ve walked past it a million times!

Stefan and Elvis handled the ordering while we grabbed seats at one of the sidewalk tables — only eight seats in total.

The kitchen is upstairs, and when the food is ready, they lower it down in a basket by rope. I’m sure that system has been in use for many, many years! The below arrow is pointing at the basket.

The pizza fritta was amazingly good — not greasy, with a piping-hot filling that was absolutely delicious.

At just 5€ each, it’s quite the bargain and definitely qualifies as true street food. We only saw locals ordering the entire time we were there. We’ll definitely be back!

Afterward, we logged a little over three miles walking around, trying to burn off some of that pizza fritta!

We returned to the ship through the new subway station right in front of the cruise terminal — it’s beautiful, all new and shiny.

By the way, by the time we returned to the ship at 2 pm, it had not rained!

We started our evening by bringing one of our rosés purchased in Provence to O’Malley’s to listen to Christian, the Colombian guitarist.

He’s really talented and performs a great mix of songs, from country classics to Latin hits. Unfortunately, the crowd was so boisterous it was hard to fully enjoy his music.

A quick side note before I get to our dinner at Omai—last night we let the clothing attire slide since it was embarkation night. But tonight, we were overwhelmed by how casual (and sometimes downright trashy) the outfits were! We haven’t seen that much denim—not the dressy kind—plus shorts, flip-flops, and baseball caps since our last Jimmy Buffett concert! Some guests looked like they had just stepped out of their backyards after gardening. Okay, vent over—I’ll let it go.

Now, on to dinner… We couldn’t decide what was better: the incredibly entertaining Chef Victor or the food itself! We haven’t laughed that much in ages. The meal was outstanding, and our tablemates were equally delightful. We highly recommend this dining experience and can’t wait to return next week!