Road biking Guides and Trips in Italy
Trips
This is the last day of biking with FunTours equipment. Today our plan is to train to Mals and ride back to Meran and Hotel Flora, mostly downhill by long 65+km. M has studied the possible train connections if we begin to want to bail we know where we have to make the decision. The station is close so we easily make the 8:16 to Mals. The train cars are admirably set...
We got a pretty early start out of Bozen for our ride to Meran. We rejoined the bike path by the bridge where we came into town Thursday. There have been occasional problems with the FunActive Tours turn-by-turn instructions and today we lose our way a number of times. One problem is several waypoints may be mentioned on a line-item, say for kilometer 13.3. John thinks the first listed should...
Marilyn names this day a 4-star ride, forty kilometers of scenery, sunny but cool, downhill coasting on well-paved, dedicated bike path, beside a river.
We admire the souls ascending toward Brixen in continual climb mode, only some of them hard guy bikers. Some look to be bike tourists and several are wispy looking teen girls.
Sterzing to Franzenfeste: wind and hills
Sterzing-Vipiteno, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy
Road biking | 14.2 miles
Road biking | 14.2 miles
The ride begins with a train trip, bringing the bikes from our hotel in Brixen to Sterzing. We are supposed to ride all the way back to Brixen, but the elevation profile for the day shows some hills that are steeper than we really like, so we will trim them off. In Sterzing, the peaks are snow covered all around. We ride through the town square and quickly find the well marked bike...
We rode through the Veneto region, mostly by bicycle and sometimes by train, for seven days. The trip was booked through Velociped, which subcontracted with Girolibero. We used Girolibero's rental bicycles and trip documents. The materials included a turn-by-turn text list and also a route map. Marilyn's bike had a bow bag with window for displaying the map. John's bike had a setup with a board for displaying under plastic the larger format turn-by-turn....
The short, easy ride back to Padua goes well. The sun is quite hot, already mid-80's, in the morning hours. Good thing it was only ten miles today.
The Padua hotel has the room ready for us, despite arrival well before the regular check in time, and the air conditioning is strong and welcome. The antihistamine goes down a treat and nose soon starts to feel better, but ears are...
We're getting ready for the day when John suggests, “Maybe we should take the train from here to Padua and ride back to Stra.”
“There's a train station here?”
“Yes, it's in the trip book.”
“That sounds like a really good idea,” Marilyn agrees. “Even with the short ride yesterday, I don't feel recuperated.” Indeed, it's been a bit hard to get a good night's sleep due to sinus problems...
We are some way from the starting point in the text instructions. It looks easy to connect from our Ai Pini hotel location but consider the trouble we had getting here. Our map work tells us we can just follow along to the stazione and then to Via Popolo and up to Via Torino, right turn and straight on till it becomes the motor way; suck it up and brave the...
We don't feel an urgency to get on the road this morning. From Treviso to Venice Mestre is a longish stage for us but if we hurry-hurried we might be able to spend the afternoon in Venice itself. But we're scheduled for a stay in Venice after this bicycle tour and we want to enjoy today's ride. A lot of the route is on the banks of the Sile, a fair,...
The day looks beautiful on rising, blue and puffy white, all threat of rain moved on. We breakfast amid a busload of German ladies. Nod morning to several fellow cyclists that we recognize but have hardly spoke. Today's stage would be 64.5 kilometers but we plan to get the train at Montebellum to skip over the last 25 kilometers. After just a few false starts we connect to the route....
We rolled away about 10am. For the first 20 kilometers we were suburban and there wasn't much interesting scenery, but later we saw pretty farm land, with new crops. We never had significant climbing but the sky and the rain clouds made some drama. The wind smelled of rain and any number of times we thought we would soon break out the rain gear. It was an exhilarating ride.
We...
