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Rome to Saturnia Day Trip on Scooter

Posted by on

Hello Friends,

I am planing a trip to Italy next year Mar-Apr. I have prepared my itinerary and really wanted to include Saturina thermal baths. I am thinking of doing a day trip to Saturina, leave early morning from Rome and back in 6-7 hours. Since I want to get the feel of driving scooter and don't want to do that in heavy traffic of Rome or any other city as many have suggested in many posts so want to travel to Saturina on scooter. I do have prior experience of riding scooter(manual and automatic). Please do let me know if the freeways are safe to drive a scooter and are there enough gas stations on the way or any other advice related to that.

Thanks you :)
Arjit

Posted by
12037 posts

After reading your post I had to think back to the week I drove in Italy. Encountered many scooters in cities but cannot recall them on 'freeways' or other high speed routes ( 90kph+)

Full size motorcycles that are common in the US, were to my recollection, rare in Italy.

You may want to re-think this plan

Gas/fuel stations are readily available. That would be the least of your problems.

A small car is a much better idea than a 2 wheel vehicle, and while I have not researched it, I would guess no more expensive to rent than a scooter

Posted by
16203 posts

Full size motorcycles are very common in Europe, including Italy, but I would rarely take mine on the freeway. Too boring and dangerous with cars and semis traveling at 120+ km/h. The fun of having a motorcycle is riding it on the curvy country roads.

The same is actually true in America. If you want to see hundreds of motorcycles in California, get out of the freeways and drive on a weekend along the curvy CA-35 (Skyline Blvd) on the watershed of the Santa Cruz Mountains on the San Francisco Peninsula. Then stop for a bite at Alice’s. You will see hundreds of fancy motorcycles.

Regarding your plans for a day trip from Rome to Saturnia on a day trip, I would consider it a stretch with a full size motorcycle, but with a 125cc Vespa on the same day, no way, I wouldn’t do it. A scooter can’t travel on freeways and with a 125cc Vespa, the top cruise speed you can hope for on regular roads is maybe 70km/h. Since you will have to go through towns and regular roads, maybe you can keep an overall average speed af 50km/h at best. That would mean almost 4 hours each way because Saturnia is about 160km. Just to put it into perspective I’ve taken my 125cc Vespa from Florence to Arezzo, Florence to Viareggio, Florence to Siena, Viareggio to Riomaggiore (all half the distance you intend to cover), and each time it was a “Trip” with a capital T.
I wouldn’t drive a Vespa to a day trip to anyplace farther than 80km each way. Your trip is twice that distance. If you do it, post your adventure here. I’d like to hear about it. I hope your “arse” can take it too.

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