Pescara, Bari, Brindisi - Italy

A smart move while hitchhiking is to keep an eye on traffic traveling in the other direction. Sometimes a driver will do a u-turn and come back to pick you up. And it's an even smarter move to decline the ride.

Hitching with my friend Mary Lynne from Rome to Pescara, I noticed a white, compact car slow down on the busy highway, the driver craning his neck out his side window to get a better look at us because he was on the other side of the highway going the other way.  When the road was clear, he made a u-turn and stopped beside us. He was in his thirties and a woman with bright, punked-out red hair was sitting next to him.

In broken English he asked where we were going. ''Pescara.'  He waved and said okay, okay, okay.  'We take you there,' he said.  Mary Lynne and I discussed whether to take the ride of not, or rather, I earnestly tried to convince her we didn't want to go because why are people turning around on the highway to pick us up?  We got in the car.

We protested the return to sweltering Rome, it had taken us forever to get out of the city, but they continued until we arrived at a hair salon where we sat with our bags for about an hour while they argued with two others, occasionally pointing at us. What was going on? When I tried to break into their conversation, they looked at me like I had crawled out of an ice floe, so I picked up my bag, looked at Mary Lynne and said,  'This is stupid.'

What did they want? I never knew, and they chased us as we ran out the door and down the street. Best not to climb into any car that has made a u-turn to pick you up, or you'll get stuck in a place you had no intention of going, or you'll be dead. End of story.

We finally made it to Pescara, where we slept on the beach for the night. It's easy to find a place to unroll your sleeping bag if you stay outside of town. 

In Bari, the Luparelli family put us up for a few days, friends of Mary Lynne who were kind enough to offer us a place to stay. The heat was phenomenal, I couldn't breath for the humidity and at 1:00 pm everyday at the peak of this oppressive heat, the family ate their main meal with red wine, a huge Italian spread of pastas and breads and meats that the aunts and grandmother spent the morning preparing in the kitchen. Dressed in black, they spent the day in the kitchen, like crows huddled around the stove. I gained weight, I couldn't walk after eating and the father would point at the food and say 'eat more, have more.'  I usually staggered to the bedroom to lie down after lunch.  Luckily, we only stayed three days.

We said our tearful goodbyes to the Luparellis (yes, after three days they had that much impact) and then hitched to Brindisi, a beautiful seaside city, where we camped out for one night before taking the ferry to Corfu. Greece!

Florence, Lac Trasimeno, Rome - Italy

Before we left Pisa, our two friends took us to the old town of Lucca, which has a conflicted history with Pisa. We didn't explore because we wanted to get going, and Mary Lynne had an eye infection that we had to get fixed. Once on the road again, we got picked up by Mario, who dropped us off on the autostrade to Florence.

You never know what's going to happen while hitching. These fellows picked us up and asked if we'd like to go to a wedding reception. It was amazing. That's the glorious thing about hitchhiking as opposed to taking a bus, you get taken to places you would never see, meet people you would never meet. Here's me handing Mary Lynne her purse, which was almost pushed off the wall into the canyon below.

Florence is a fabulous city if you love art. The fabulous Galleria dell'Accademia is where you can find the original David by Michelangelo. There are other fabulous art galleries too: the Bobili Gardens and the Uffizi Gallery. 

After Florence we hitched with the intention of getting to Rome, but instead ended up at Lac Trasimeno, north of Rome. Two fellows who picked us up, Franko and Augusto, took us to a restaurant where we feasted on an 8-course meal with some of their friends. It was loads of fun. Afterwards, we set up our tent and camped beside the lake. We woke up in the morning with a huge, smelly blob in our tent.  I thought Mary Lynne had been sick but she protested she hadn't and it did look raw hamburger.  We thought perhaps somebody had played a joke on us, but we were camped out in quite a remote area.  Oh well, a day for swimming and tanning!   

We met two Italian families on the beach and went out for supper with one of their uncles named Feduce, who happened to own a huge villa on Lake Trasimeno. He invited us to stay for a night and his villa turned out to be a historic building filled with Napoleonic era antiques and art works; breathtaking.  Unfortunately, Feduce was more interested in his recent acquisitions, Mary Lynne and I, and I wound up fleeing from him during the night, down the stairs and around the villa. It was quite comical. Fortunately, he had bad knees. Hey, we said pleasant goodbyes anyway and I gave him a hug. 

Hitching to Rome the following day, we got picked up a fellow named Franko, who just happened to own the pensione we had stayed at in Rome. What was even more spectacular is that we saw Feduce when we got out of Franko's car in Rome. What a coincidence! Rome is spectacular, and even though it's crowded and hot, well worth the visit! So much to see.

Milan to The Leaning Tower in Pisa

Hitchhiking does have its challenges sometimes, as the next two rides would prove. We made it to Milan after a sickening car ride through the alps with a kinetic nutjob from England who drove like a psycho through the twisted highway to make the airport in time to pick up his best friend. Throwing up in the back of his convertible Mercedes wasn't a good option, but if he didn't stop NOW, or slow down, it was going to be game over for his fine, stitched leather. More to save his car, he did pull into a cafe where I could get my breath, but it wasn't for long.

He finally dropped us off at a wonderful little pensione, where we took a shower and washed our clothes. Milan, a city full of wonderful history and culture including Leonardo da Vinci's 'Last Supper,' was just too cold and gray, so we decided to continue the next morning and go south, a decision I regret now.

The next morning it was back to the highway and within minutes of sticking our thumbs out, a black Mercedes truck pulled over. The driver rolled down his window and stuck his head out.
'Pizza?' I asked.
'Oh, si, si, Pe-e-e-sa. No problema.' He waved us into the truck.

Mary Lynne and I thought he was alone, but climbing into the cab we noticed something stirring, and except for the hairdo, he could have been Quasimodo rising from his bunk wiping the sleep from his bulbous eyeballs. His tongue fell out leering at Mary Lynne getting in and I knew she wasn't aware of what she was beside. Yet. I also knew at this ride may be challenging, but not so challenging I wanted to get back out into the cold and thumb another ride.

The two-lane highway with its dusty, narrow shoulders twisted through high mountain bluffs overlooking the Mediterranean. Food wrappers, empty cigarette packages and newspapers filled the floor of the cab and the smell of moldy food and clothing inside the truck was nauseating, but we were getting to Pisa in good time. The driver, a dark-skinned, curly-headed fellow of about 40, chirped in Italian and I made do with my lack of language skills by adding vowels to the end of either French or English words and rolling them out: we got our meaning across. The ride was okay until we went to get out.

As we approached the exit to Pisa, I pointed to the shoulder and said 'stop here,' and stop being the same word in Italian as it is in English, I figured it was a no-brainer, but when I glanced over at the driver he was grinning, a sickening grin I was familiar with, a grin that meant I would probably have to pull out his hair follicle by follicle, break some teeth and leave some deep scratches in his face in order to get him to hold up, the same look I’d seen so many times in Quebec while hitching, the look that tells me I might have to shed blood if I want to continue my journey. I gestured again for him to stop but he laughed, while Quasimodo in the back giggled and reached forward and smacked his pal on the shoulder, high-fiving him for the attitude.

We were at a high elevation, cliffs, steep inclines and ocean on our right side, mountains that came straight down to meet the shoulder on our left. I stabbed my finger towards the ocean outside, demanding he pull over. 'If you no stop, the camione over there,' I shrieked, pointing to the cliff on my right. It was pretty clear what I meant, and I had to rev up the crazy in order for him to get the message, but he continued to joke with his sidekick in the back, joking about the fun they were going to have, until I suddenly lunged for the steering wheel and clung to it. I didn't turn it. But I might! He cursed, hunching over the wheel, protecting it, one hand out to push me back, the other prying my fingers off the steering wheel as I continued to cling on. A crazy woman! We went arm to arm in the front seat and when he understood my message that we were all going to die if he didn't let us out, he yelled 'ya, ya, ya,' braked and pulled over. But before we could jump down and say thanks for the ride, they seized our knapsacks and smashed them to the road so hard they broke open. We snatched them so the truck wouldn't also run over them and off they went, blowing the horn, waving, yelling out the window.

We laughed as we stumbled down the highway picking up our gear, but as we joked and argued about which one of them was cuter, three young men stopped in a Renault and offered us a lift into Pisa. What luck! From Lucca, a town close to Pisa, they knew just the right pensione for us girls, and for being all that, returned later with a pizza.