Traveling to Italy in September and will be visiting Florence, Sorrento and Rome - approx. 3 days each location. Was wondering about renting a bicycle for a day and was wondering which location would afford the best cycling experience and would anyone know of a good place to rent one?
Also, if you know of any one day cycling tours in any of these locations?
Thanks for your help.
You're asking for the best of the 3 and it's easy to eliminate Rome, for traffic and other reasons, which narrows it down to two.
Try googling bike tours or bike rentals in each of those towns. I think I would rather walk than try biking in Rome. Impossible traffic!
We take bike trips in Italy all the time, but never ride in the cities. Biking in Italy is about the country side. The largest town we've ever started from was Siena.
There are bike rentals in Florence, here's the link:
http://www.florencebybike.com/ They do day guided tours, but mostly outside of the city, into the Chianti region for wine tastings, etc.
Other cities, especially Rome, are not good for biking in city limits. Sorrento is small, you don't need a bike, and the surrounding roads are not safe for biking either.
Just found this on Rome for biking. I still agree that biking IN Rome isn't that great of in idea. You better be very steady on a bike, and NOT afraid of traffic!
Thanks everyone. This is such a timely, helpful site!!!!!!
Kathy- I love to bike on vacation as well and have wonderful memories of biking The Dingle Penninsula, The Cotswolds, Copenhagen, etc. When we go in the fall this year, we wanted to do some biking. I found two places that do bike tours out of Florence and up into the hills of Chianti. http://tuscany-biketours.com/ and http://ibikeitaly.com/. Both of them have been reviewed on Graffiti Wall. Look under "outdoor adventures". John reveiwed Ibikeitaly.com on 4/19/2008 and Andrew reviewed tuscany-biketours.com on 2/12/2007. I have been to Rome and Florence on previous trips, and I think I prefer biking in the countryside :) I have driven through the area these two vendors take you, and it was beautiful. Have fun
I agree with those who suggest not biking in cities. Tolerating and avoiding traffic would take all the fun out of it. Forget about those 3 towns you list. I would go to the Tourist Information Office in each town and ask about a bus ride to see the sights.
Take the advice and do it only in the open countryside. Do the google search for "Biking + the name of a smaller town." You can find rental agencies.
