VIshal

I was thinking about cycling through Germany and Italy and was wondering if anyone has made a similar trip? If so, how did you go about doing it if you went alone and what steps did you take to make sure that no problems would occur while cycling through an entire counrty. I am thinking about doing it in 3 months. Thanks.

Tricia

My suggesstion would be to cycle through Holland and Germany. My family lives in Holland and the bicycle reins King there- over the car- the country is flat- and has 7200 miles of fietspads or bike trails. I could find you much info on them. They allow you to fly your own bike over on many airlines, then can use the trains to get to your base and then use the fietspads to see the countryside. Especially nice from March to May when tulips are in bloom. There is a 70 acre park full of tulips and bike trails I read about. After getting your feet wet in Holland you could move on the Germany. Holland is easy to naviage because everyone speaks English, its easy to navigate there, easy to figure out their guilders ($$) and every person rides a bike, and every garage has bike pumps, parts, wheels etc. Take the ferry over to one of the Freisland Islands and ride your bike through the sand dunes and pine forests of Texel or Terschelling. I had a blast! Cute little windmill pubs. People are healthy and energetic!

Tricia

I used my Excite Search Engine and typed in bicycling in Italy and then ...in Holland. Here are two nice websites (and you are right the pictures of the Lake District in Italy are gorgeous) www.gorp.com/europeds/italy.htm or e mail them at [email protected]. Try the website tho. and see the pictures and read. They are a tour and expensive but you can pick their brains and get their brochures. Then for Holland try www.nbt.nl/cycl.index.html. It has a full on section on bicycling-it tells you where to get cycling maps, how to buy a train pass for you bikes, when you can and cannot take a bike on the train, what types of bikes you can rent, has a picture of a route near the North sea that covers 225 miles along cobblestone streets. Let me know what you decide! In any case the Holland site will help you- hopefully some of it is applicable to other European countries.

Richard

Three years ago my wife and I loaded our bikes on American Airlines in Dallas,, flew to Malpensa (Milan's airport) where I re-assembled the bikes and we rode them out of the airport to start our tour of Italy's lake district, starting at Stresa on Lago Maggiore. I am 60 and my wife is 50, we travel alone with all our gear on the bikes (no tour group, no 'sag wagon'). We had a great time and no close encounters with autos.
Last year we did the same, but this time to Frankfurt (again assembling the bikes at the airport) and then took a train from Frankfurt to Zell in Austria where we sarted our ride to Passau and then along the Danube to Melk. Austria is VERY bike friendly, great train system and bike trails.
This year we are doing Germany with a side trip to Prague.
We found Nadine Slavinski's CYCLING EUROPE and Dennis & Tina Jaffe's BIKING THROUGH EUROPE helpful in planning our itinerary.

len everett

CYCLING DANUBE RIVER ROUTE? we are planning to travel to Europe in mid May would like to cycle this route. Any advise or names of tour groups to contact or avoid would be welcome, we are a retired couple and will be doing a bike/berge trip in Holland prior to this.

Jens

You don't have to go to the Netherlands - or Denmark - to avoid high mountains, in Italy, I would recommend Puglia, the "heel of the Italian boot". There you can coose between the gentle rolling landscape close to the sea and the more mountaneous regions inland. There are lots of nice towns and interesting places to see. E-mail me for more information. I've done beautiful Puglia itself on bicycle two times some years ago and haven't stopped dreaming of going back.