Braving Naples To Channel My Inner Julia Roberts

Before salivating on the mozzarella melting in Julia Robert's pizza in Sony Pictures' "Eat, Pray, Love," I have already collected a liter of drool while reading the book of Elizabeth Gilbert and swore to fly to Naples one day just to eat that pizza.

Pizzeria da Michele should thank Gilbert because seven million readers (that's how much books she sold) now have Naples as part of their bucket list despite its notoriety.

And notorious as an adjective to Naples is an understatement. This is how author Elizabeth Gilbert describes Naples in her book "Eat, Pray, Love," "Wild, raucious, noisy, dirty, ball-out Naples. An anthill inside a rabbit warren, with all the exotocism of a Middle Eastern bazaar and a touch of New Orleans voodoo. A tripped-out, dangerous, and cheerful nuthouse. My friend Wade came to Naples in the 1970s and was mugged... in a museum. The city is all decorated with laundry that hangs from every window and dangles across every street; everbody's fresh-washed undershirts and brassiers flapping in the wind like Tibetan prayer flags. There is not a street in Naples without some tough little kid in shorts and mismatched socks is not screaming up the sidewalk to some other tough little kid on the rooftop nearby.

"Nor is there a building in this town that doesn't have one crooked old woman, peering suspiciously down the activity below."

Before my performance in Salerno which is one hour away from Naples, I told the president of the Fil-Com Salerno group, Amor Velasco, to take me to Naples because I wanted to eat the pizza Julia Roberts ate in "Eat, Pray, Love."

They were all scared to bring me to Naples as Amor described the city to be the "Tondo of Italy."

Then each and every Filipino in the group started sharing horror stories they experienced like being mugged by two big Neopolitans, bags being snatched while walking in the streets by men in motorcycles, cars being smashed to get things inside, bags being snatched inside their car while they were drivi! ng becau se their car windows were open and the worse part a Filipino priest who was wearing his habit, robbed of his savings! - $10,000 USD - in the train station.

But I was persistent and begged my house sponsor Avel Gramata in the Naples US base to bring me to Pizzeria da Michele.

Avel Gramata is a retired U.S. Navy officer who now holds a federal job position in the Department of Defense and is married to a very nice Ilokana Teofe Gramata. They are both Filipinos. Avel is a voracious reader devouring any book in front of him from novels to political journals to essays.

So I read to him page 79 to 80 of Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love" to convince him to go outside his safe naval base and brave scary Naples - "Pizzeria da Michele is a small place with only two rooms and one nonstop oven. Its about a 15-minute walk from the train station in the rain, don't even worry about it, just go. You need to get there fairly early in the day because sometimes they run out of dough which will break your heart.

"By 1p.m., the streets outside the pizzeria become jammed with neopolitans trying to get into the place, shoving for access like they're trying to get space on a lifeboat. There's not a menu. They only have two varieties of pizza there - regular and extra cheese. None of this new-age California olives-and-sun-dried-tomato wannabe pizza twaddle.

"The dough, it takes me half my meal to figure out, tastes more like Indian nan than like any pizza dough I have ever tried. It's soft and chewy and yielding, but incredibly thin. I thought we only had two choices in our lives when it comes to pizza crust - thin and crispy, or like thick and doughy. How was I to have known there could be a crust in this world that was thin and doughy? Holy of all Holies! Thin, doughy, strong, gummy, yummy, chewy, salty pizza paradise.

"On top, there is a sweet tomato sauce that foams up all bubbly and creamy when it melts the fresh buffalo mozzarella, and the one sprig of basil in the middle of the whol! e deal s omehow infuses the entire pizza with herbal radiance, much the same way one shimmering movie star in the middle of the party brings a contact high of glamour to everyone around her..." (Elizabeth Gilbert, "Eat, Pray, Love" (Penguin Books USA, 2006), pp 79-80)

I finally convinced the couple because they too salivated on the words Gilbert used to describe the pizza and we went on our death-defying journey to Naples. Upon leaving the base, "Kuya" Avel said inside the car, "Close all your windows and lock all your doors."

Upon entering the city, I was awed with the garbage and grime everywhere. Amor was wrong, it is not the Tondo of Italy, more like Payatas. I thought to myself that this was once the glorious cities in Mesopotamian history that Alexander the Great conquered, what happened?

"Kuya" Avel told me that the Naples waste management crisis dates back to 2007 and up to now the disposal of the trash is obviously still unresolved.

Naples has suffered from the dumping of solid waste into overfilled landfills. Because of this, the municipal workers refused to pick up any garbage ever since. As a result, the waste had begun to appear as regular fixtures on the streets of Naples, posing severe health risks to the metropolitan population. The problem was caused at least in part by the Camorra, a powerful mafia-type organization based in Naples, who had created a lucrative business in the municipal waste disposal business. Heavy metals, industrial waste, chemicals and household waste are frequently mixed together, dumped near roads and burnt to avoid detection, leading to severe soil and air pollution. The Camorra is supposedly responsible for all the crimes and syndicates in the city including small time pick-pockets, akyat-bahay gangs to large scale smuggling of drugs and human trafficking.

You could just imagine how scared we were crawling through the grime and crime of Naples just to get to Pizzeria da Michele. Upon arriving, there were no long lines outside so I guess Eliza! beth Gil bert kinda exaggerated that part. I got a table beside the picture of Julia Roberts eating the famous pizza and ordered exactly what author Elizabeth Gilbert did - the pizza margherita with double cheese.

The waiter was surprised that the three of us only ordered one pizza and even asked if I was sure I only wanted to order one for the three of us.

Peering on other tables while waiting for my order, I was surprised to find out that every Italian would eat one large pizza each for themselves no matter how slender or sexy they were. So we called the waiter again to order another one (which ended in a box because Filipinos cannot really do that one pizza each - we have small stomachs). "Kuya" Avel kept going outside the pizzeria just to check if his car was there and I kinda felt guilty for bringing the couple outside their safety zone. I took pictures of the pizza cooks who looked nothing like what author Elizabeth Gilbert described them to be, "The guys who make this miracle happen are shoveling the pizzas in and out of the wood-burning oven, looking for all the world like the boilermen in the belly of a great ship who shovel coal into raging furnaces. Their sleeves were rolled up over sweaty forearms, their faces red with exertion, one eye squinted against the heat of the fire and a cigarette dangling in their lips..."

On the contrary, they were clean and working with a smile, wearing white shirts, and it seemed that smoking was not allowed inside the premises as I did not see or smell cigarette smoke. They also took my picture and kept on saying I was "bellisima."

I love Italy, Italians look at me like I was some beauty queen. If only they knew I was just a comedienne doing crazy antics with my face on television.

The pizza arrived and it looked and smelled exactly how Elizabeth Gilbert described it in her book. And now for the bite, after flying to Naples, Italy just to taste this pizza, after getting lost for one hour to find this pizzeria, after clutching my bag with my ! life whi le crossing the streets of Naples, I was going to finally cross out one of my bucket list before I die, I was finally tasting the world-famous pizza, the pizza Julia Roberts ate, the pizza Elizabeth Gilbert was so crazy about... I took a bite... savored the flavour...

Shakey's was better.

Giselle Sanchez is a singer, corporate/TV host and a stand-up comedienne. She will be performing for the London Barrio Fiesta in Hounslow with Gerald Anderson, Jericho Rosales, Cristine Reyes, Angelica Panganiban and Jed Madela on June 30 and July 1. Follow her on Twitter @GiselleXanchez and Instagram (gisellesanchez143). E-mail her at giselleoffice@gmail.com.