My husband is wanting to ride bikes while we're on vacation. We will be in Lauterbrunnen Switzerland, Venice, Rome, Cinque Terre. Does anyone have any suggestions on bike rentals or bike tours (non-strenuous!!)? Thanks!

Scratch Lauterbrunnen if you don't want strenuous tours in this rugged area, however you could rail down to Interlaken and cop a bike and then ride it around Lake Brienz or Lake Thun.
Biking in Venice would be a complete hassle due i think - city is not that big and humpback bridges with stairs, etc. cinque Terre also a no-no unless mountain biking, like in Lauterbrunnen, where many folks mountain bike, no roads between the 5 Lands at least not without going up and down serious ascents. Rome? watch out for the mopeds that materialize out of no where and traffic and lots of cobblestones - possible but not fun it seems. Lots of places in Europe are conducive to great biking but not much the places you're heading to.

Hi jill_h,

For Swiss bike rentals, go to www.rent-a-bike.ch. Though the site is only in German & French, it's pretty easy to navigate. It'll tell you which train stations rent bikes, and there are some bike routes as well.

s

You would have to be certifiably insane or fit like Lance-friggin'-Armstrong to bike in Switzerland. I saw reasonably fit people hiking in Switzerland but only those with buns of steel and absolutely no body fat biking there. Sounds like a great idea unless you're really acclimated (and maybe you are) to biking up and down mountains.

Not so, aschie30. I'm 50 yo and reasonable fit, and I've biked Switzerland. There are flat parts!! I've biked around the St Moritz Lakes & the Inn Valley & the Saanen Valley.

For jill_h, I just checked the site I gave you above for routes around Lauterbrunnen, and they note one easy one from Meiringen (where you can rent bikes) to Interlaken along Lake Brienz (read: flat!).

s

I biked around Lake Brienz and while it wasn't "hilly" like where I hiked last fall in Ticino, it certainly wasn't flat. All I'm saying is that the terrain around Switzerland can make biking (where you expect to actually pedal) a bit frustrating. I prefer hiking.

Bicycles are not allowed in historic Venice. You have to go to the Lido.

Your destinations don't lend themselves to bike tours, although there are tours which originate in/near Venice and go through the Veneto and beyond. A friend of ours (75 yrs. old, very experienced, ridden the TdeF route the past 3 years) is taking just such a bike tour from Venice and ending in Bologna or Ravenna (I forget which). There may be companies which offer shorter tours, say Venice to Verona or Padova.

It is certainly possible to bike in Switzerland on completely flat terrain! You just have to stick to the northern third of the country (the "Mittelland"), and follow the rivers (i.e. the Aare is a good candidate). Additionally, if you're a mountain biker, you can take the cable car or train uphill, then just coast down. No fitness required!

Biking in Italy is awesome. But there are not many bike lanes so you'll have to do a lot of your cycling on the national roads. Beware of Italian drivers, their driving conventions may be a bit different than what you're used to.

http://www.eurobike.at/en/eb/suche/suche.asp

We used this company to book a 10-day bicycling tour along the Danube River in Austria. They also have tours in Italy and Switzerland, some only a few days long. I looked through and there are some which say the route is fairly flat (pick a trip and then check "character" for a description of the difficulty).

Some tours are guided and some are self-guided. We took a self-guided tour. They booked the hotels with breakfasts, transported the luggage each morning to that night's hotel, arranged for the bike rental and provided transportation to the rental shop, and provided maps and directions to each night's hotel. We took our time each day, riding at a comfortable pace and stopping whenever we wanted to.

The trip was very reasonably priced. I just checked the website and the current price for this 10-day trip is 545 euros per person plus a 40 euro high season surcharge plus a 50 euro bike rental fee.

Accomodations were simple. This is the type of tour we were looking for. We wanted to be on our own for the most part, weren't looking for anything fancy, and didn't want to spend a lot of money since we were 4 people.

The link doesn't take you to the Switzerland tours, as I thought it would, so you can just use www.eurobike.at and choose the region "Switzerland" or "Italy".