We passed through Monte Carlo, Nice and Cannes and on into Italy. The first thing we noticed was that everything cost the same in liras as we had paid in francs in France although the exchange rate was twice as many liras to the pound. In other words, something costing 10 liras was half the price of the same article costing 10 francs. Working out exchange rates always tests my reasoning powers to their limit! The banks sell at one rate and buy at another. The moral for anyone as poor as we were was not to acquire foreign currency in excess of one's needs.
The weather was growing hotter every day and we had no more rain till we were once again north of the mountains in France. Our route through Italy would be mainly along the coast but we headed inland through the Appenines en route to Genoa. We stopped at a restaurant in a medieval town. Two men at a neighbouring table sent across a bottle of red wine and I drank more of it than was wise. Nobody had ever told me not to accept wine from strange men! We took the gift as offered in a spirit of friendship to two impoverished young women trying to enjoy a holiday on a shoestring. Drinking wine with one's meals was a luxury unknown to me till that summer.
On leaving the restaurant, I felt distinctly light-headed and unsteady on my feet. The world seemed to be revolving round me and I saw everything in a haze. Eithne told me to hold on tightly to her but I kept slipping sideways on the back of the scooter as we set off through the mountains. Eventually, Eithne stopped and told me to walk about in an effort to recover my equilibrium. We soon had company on the isolated road. A car drew up and two young men emerged and began to pester us. We weren't that innocent that we didn't recognise danger. Eithne was using her fluent Italian to reason with the two when another car approached and in my dizzy state I decided to flag it down. To our utter surprise, we recognised our benefactors from the restaurant. We could have hugged them in relief and gratitude.
Our delight was short-lived, however as, having sent the first two packing, our knights in shining armour were, in turn, misreading the signals! They were certain they had female company for the night! In spite of our innocence and trust in people, we were beginning to understand the dangers young women faced in Italy. It took us a long time to persuade those men that we had no intention of sharing lodgings with them overnight.
Spezia, Livorna, Civitavecchia - the Italian names of the towns we stayed in rolled off our tongues in succession. Then we came to Rome, the Eternal City. What adventures were in store for us there! We made our way to the Youth Hostel and found two tourist policemen on duty. How handsome they looked in their smart khaki uniforms! They took a shine to us. As we stood chatting, a group of Scots people walked past, one of the men wearing a kilt. Suddenly, the shorter policeman took off his cap and doubled up laughing at the sight of a man in a skirt! When I spotted his bald head and the falling away of his glamorous image, I went into a real fit of the giggles. His laughter ceased and his face turned angry. He sensed I was laughing at him. Eithne calmed the situation by explaining that I, too, was laughing at the man in a skirt. He wasn't at all sure about that!
Then he suggested that she and I steal a blanket from the hostel so that he could lock us up in the cells for the night. We decided it was time to escape into the building.
Next morning we set out to visit the Catacombs but on the way we had to cross to the far side of the Colosseum. The scooter stalled and we stood by the kerb fidgeting with it. A young Romeo on a motorbike appeared from nowhere and soon fixed the problem. As we surveyed the chaotic traffic, Eithne told me that I'd have to dash across on foot while she manoeuvred her way through. It was a terrifying scene, with every man for himself. No one stopped to give way and it was a miracle there wasn't a major pile-up. It was like a film being played in fast forward. There was no way I would dart through, risking life and limb.
Eithne suddenly took off and I could see her on the other side waiting for me. Romeo had lingered. He pointed to his pillion. I took him to be offering to ferry me across safely. I hopped on, seeing that as the lesser of two evils. On reaching the spot where Eithne was waiting, I expected him to stop and drop me off. He whizzed past and sped off out of Rome towards God knows where. The faster he went the more I panicked. I began screaming and thumping him on the back, all to no effect. To say that it was the most terrifying ride of my life is an understatement. There was no way Eithne was ever going to catch up. I didn't know where or how I was going to end up. I was tempted to leap off but I knew I would probably die if I fell at that speed. I was petrified. My mind was in turmoil trying to work out what to do. I waved frantically at every vehicle passing in the opposite direction. No one took a blind bit of notice.
Then it all ended abruptly. I began to breathe freely once again. We were outside the Catacombs and there were lots of people about. Romeo was grinning broadly, enjoying the trick he had played on us. Ten minutes later Eithne turned up and I could see how agitated she, too, had been. We were the right Innocents Abroad!
Our newly found companion accompanied us on our tour of the catacombs. I was so scared of being lost in there that I kept close to a group enjoying a guided tour. Back in Rome, we had a problem to shake off our escort. We decided to go to the Youth Hostel, hoping to make use of the two policemen to scare him off. To our relief, two different officers were on duty.
Rome was amazing. Early in the morning we would sit down at a table outside a café near St Peter's and enjoy freshly baked rolls and delicious coffee. We derived as much sensual pleasure from the smells of the bread and coffee as from consuming them. Eating out in Italy was really cheap at that time. Each day we treated ourselves to an ice cream. My favourite was cassata. Nobody made ice cream like the Italians. Minestrone soup and spaghetti bolognaise were two other specialities that we indulged in. As in France, food was always freshly cooked. There was no such thing as heating up frozen dishes in a microwave.
We visited all the tourist sites. We stood on the steps of St Peter's and on the Spanish Steps and surveyed the tourists from around the world. Eithne spotted another scooter with an Irish registration in St Peter's Square and we waited by it till the owner appeared. To our amazement it was the brother of a school friend of Eithne's. He was training to be a priest and he was really pleased to talk to someone from his home town.
I hadn't noticed that my upper arms were becoming sunburnt till one night in the hostel in Rome blisters started oozing. As I lay on my bunk, I began to rave and hallucinate. I was suffering from severe sunstroke. All night I cried out, upsetting our room-mates. I was lying naked in a field of snow and it was January. I was aware that the others were asking Eithne to tell me to shut up but I raved on and on. We couldn't afford to call a doctor so next day we visited a pharmacy and bought aspirin to lower my temperature and an American miracle ointment to spread thickly on the arms. I was extremely ill but after a few days massive scabs formed from the blisters and gradually I began to recover.
One day we travelled along the Old Appian Way to Lido di Ostia, a dirty, overcrowded, popular seaside resort outside Rome. Ostia, at the mouth of the River Tiber, had long been a retreat for rich people of Rome, many of whom owned villas there.
On our way back we were joined, firstly by one young Italiano on a scooter, then another and a third till there were maybe twenty of them weaving in and out and across our path bumping off our scooter and reaching across to push us. Some had to retreat to the parallel New Appian Way. It was scary. Suddenly a carload of tourist police appeared and sent the youths scattering in all directions.
On the Sunday we rode out to Castelgandolfo, the Pope's summer residence. His Holiness appeared on the balcony to give his papal blessing to the assembled thousands.
Having spent five days in Rome, we headed south towards Naples, a city that was extremely dirty, noisy and full of poor people. We stopped on the outskirts and Eithne knocked on a door, intending to ask where we could find accommodation for a night. We must have been really naïve to think of doing such a daft thing. A tourist policeman appeared as if by magic and demanded to know why we were knocking on the door. He strongly warned us never again to do such a foolish thing. He gave us instructions to go to a small hotel by the station and said he would ring ahead and tell them to expect us. That's where we stayed. The proprietor was a friend of the policeman. How did we know we'd be safe there? We didn't but somewhere along the line we had to trust someone and if you can't trust a policeman whom can you trust? The station area was rather seedy but the hotel looked after us well. On our arrival, a boy ran out and took our rucksacks and carried them to our room. We were embarrassed because we knew he was expecting a tip but we couldn't afford to give him much.
Next morning we set off again and we stopped at one point to read our map. In next to no time we were surrounded by a huge mob of what we took to be street urchins. They were pulling at the bike, at our rucksacks, at us. Their actions were menacing and we recognised that we were in real danger. Suddenly they scarpered, leaving us trembling in fear. There stood our policeman friend from the other side of the city who had rescued us the previous evening. 'Not you two again!' he exclaimed in Italian.
He called himself our Guardian Angel! After another sharp lecture we went on our way. We understood by then why there was a special police force whose sole duties involved looking after tourists. Although Naples was such a vile city, its surroundings were beautiful. The Bay of Naples is truly scenic. We ended up in Meta di Sorrento. From there we looked across the blue waters of the bay to the Isle of Capri. There is a road in Dalkey outside Dublin called the Vico Road and the view from there is similar to that in Italy. We enjoyed a swim in the warm waters but the salt on the wounds on my arms made me scream with pain.
Our visit to Pompeii, one of a pair of cities buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, was probably the most interesting event of this time. Excavations were at an early stage and some of the more shocking finds were closed to us. Walking through the ghostly streets, we tried to picture it as it was before it was engulfed in boiling hot lava and ash. Silent and eerie, the spirits of the dead seemed to be all around us. For Eithne this was one of the highlights of the holiday. She made it all so real for me.
It was time to retrace our steps. The journey back was mainly uneventful. We were tired and I was feeling below par and homesick. Boulogne seemed a long distance away from us. We didn't linger anywhere as we had seen enough. We were certainly a lot more worldly-wise and we took no more risks. There was just one scare on a lonely stretch of road. Ahead we could see a roadblock with soldiers pointing guns at us. For a moment we were tempted to turn back but we knew they would catch up in no time so we faced the music, hoping for the best. They were simply having fun at our expense. They demanded to see our passports and examined the scooter asking what the letters IRL stood for. They seemed to soften on learning that we were Irish. We had earlier on gone into a field and helped ourselves to some tomatoes, the plum variety. It was a novelty to see tomatoes growing in such quantities in a field. For a moment we thought we had been seen taking the tomatoes!
I decided I didn't like Italian men. We noticed in the south that the women often did the heavy work while the men just loafed about in the sun. My innate feminism rebelled against the situation.
Eithne and I enjoyed many a cosy chat as we rode along and I learned that she had fallen in love with a divinity student whom I knew and who was going out with my cousin for a while. She never married but became headmistress of her school later on. She was so unlike any other head the school had appointed in the past. She was quite unconventional and lived a bit in the clouds but we had a great six weeks together on that tour.
I remember sailing into Folkestone and seeing the White Cliffs of Dover and exclaiming 'Oh! It's so good to be home.'
'We're not home yet,' said Eithne. 'We still have to cross England and the Irish Sea'.
Although she, too, was Anglican, she was fiercely nationalistic and proud of her Irishness, while to me England had always been like my real home.
Young women today will smile at what was to us the adventure of a lifetime!