Italy 2025 - Travel and Cycling near Venice
My friend Dar found a cycling hotel in the Dolomites and asked if I wanted to join. You had to commit months in advance because it fills up fast so I put down my deposit in December 2024. This took a lot of planning and research and it will be my first trip to mainland Europe! I should have started booking things sooner but got lazy.
Over 6 weeks I’ll only cover this small northern area, visiting Venice, Verona and Milan for tourism and cycling the Alps, Dolomites and the Lombardian lakes. As I sit here week 2 in my Airbnb with no air conditioning I am thankful I was smart enough not to book southern Italy this time around!
While June-August is the worst season for tourism and heat, it’s the best ( and only…) for cycling the mountains!
Part 1 - Itinerary
Flying into Venice airport, staying in Mestre for 5 nights then taking a train to Bassano Del Grappa! I am trying to cover as much distance in diverse areas as I can on the bike and seeing how it goes avoiding renting a car. So far it’s been great and has saved me hundreds of dollars.
I recommend planning a trip well in advance so you can find accommodations near train/bus stations, especially if you have a big-ass bike bag.
I got a new bike bag ( again ) for this trip because I remember how much of a hassle it was to drag the 2 wheel models. This baby has 4 and it rolls nice and smoothly with little effort. Great for moving between Airbnbs as I will drag this for several KMs during this trip. However it has super low clearance and snags on every bump. It’s also allergic to stairs… Well, nothing is perfect I guess.
The Worst Loop
Due to arriving quite late in Venice I had to spend the morning setting up the bike and then grocery shopping. Set out to ride at noon where I discovered an unfortunate reality:
Europe was in the middle of a heat wave and pretty much every day was averaging 34c between about 10am to 6pm. This loop was also terrible, using tons of bike paths ( complete trash ) and mostly going through industrial/agricultural flat zones in the brutal heat. I think it’s probably the worst ride I’ll have done during the 6 weeks so that’s good news! (week 2 as of this writing). Bonus: Disc brake was rubbing the entire time. Disc brakes are a complete trash technology. I’ve had 5 bikes with disc brakes and every single one had rubbing issues. Garbage.
Quickly realized the bike path network in Italy is trash, as it is everywhere on earth. I have an infinite amount of hate for bike paths. Here they just start and end randomly as you go from town to town, deviate into the woods, end in wrong-facing one way streets ( almost died ), have awful surfaces, switch sides of the road constantly, take pointless detours around roundabouts, are littered with barriers and crosswalks…
Bike paths are not designed for cyclists. They are designed for keeping cyclists off the roads, similar to how jails aren’t designed for the benefit of the prisoners.
I avoided every bike path I could for the rest of this trip and didn’t regret it one second, even on the sometimes sketchy primary roads that have basically no shoulder. Would rather have trucks pass within 2 feet of me all day than waste my life on these trash bike paths where I spend half my time braking and playing the“find where the rest of this thing continues, if it does” game.
Bike paths are just garbage, seriously. Slower, badly maintained, no services, worse terrain, no wind protection from cars and way more dangerous if you go at any sort of reasonable speeds on them.
This is a pretty sweet ride you can do if you are based in Mestre ( though I don’t recommend you cycle from there honestly ).For 25 euro you can get a 24h transit pass that includes all the ferries that connect the chain of islands around Venice. Gets you to do boat rides in Venice too, the holy grail of Venice activities, and it won’t cost you 100 euros like the scam gondolas! Woohoo!
Treviso and Castlefranco
The best ride of this part for sure. Up north in Montebelluna I even started seeing actual cyclists instead of just the occasional random Indian guy on a hybrid biking on the highway at 2pm.
Leaving to Bassano Del Grappa
That’s it for now! Next up: All the sights in Venice.