Raiden's students should have received a message telling them to meet at Portalocity, where they would find their teacher in jeans with a hole in the knee and one of the last clean shirts he'd had in the closet, which was a nice, burnt orange button down. It was a shame it was not likely to stay clean very long.
"All right, everybody, listen up," he said once he'd counted what he thought was the correct number of heads. "I'm Raiden, and this is..." He did a drumroll with his hands on the desk, which made the gnomes sigh. "The Wonderful World of Pizza! Today we're getting started by going to the birthplace of modern pizza,
Naples, Italy. While there have been of course flatbreads with stuff on them since ancient times, it was in Naples that this was really refined and tomatoes were added to the mix, creating the modern pizza. At first, pizza was sold at open air stands, frequently by the slice, and it was food for the poor and working class, something you could easily pick up and eat on the go. It only really took off after it got royal approval in 1889...but that's another story. Today we're going to the oldest pizzeria in Naples, the
Antica Pizzeria Port'Alba, which got its start as one of those open air stands in the 1700s before moving into a brick and mortar building during the 19th century. You can try the pizza--the Margherita is, of course, a classic, but in a port city like Naples you can't go wrong trying the seafood--and then explore the city a little, maybe pick up a pastry like a
sfogliatella, another regional classic. And maybe a souvenir t-shirt or two." He would be shopping for one, because it was that or try to squeeze into the clothes Smalls had left around his place. "Sound like a plan? Let's go!"