Italy 2025 Report and Guide
The guide I wished existed that answers all the questions I had before doing this trip. How to get around Italy to bike without renting a car.
GENERAL
You can get around with just English
You can do everything without cash. Just credit/debit/phone app.
Check when things are open as stores/attractions have random days they close and are often closed in the noon-3pm window.
Check into extra insurance for your bike in case the airline “Loses” it as their basic coverage is likely much less than your bike stuff
Check the weather daily especially the radar map and plan your ride around that
Get the Garmin maps for free using BBBike. I use Strava to map my rides.
Don’t need to carry passport to cross borders but maybe bring it just in case
Will not cover travel/ health insurance here or cellphone plans. Everyone has a different situation but just make sure you have all of that covered, it’s very cheap and can save you a lot. Travel health insurance typically covers cycling but check if they cover racing/events as you might have to add extra. For the phone it costs me 10-15$/month for a Europe plan from USmobile so that gives you a ballpark.
Transit
Italy has a great public transit network that is very accommodating of bicycles. Plan your stays in areas that are easily reached by train. The entire trip I didn’t need a taxi or uber once because I just walked from the train station to my Airbnb. I used the omio app to book transit in advance and to find itineraries. I used Googlemaps “public transit” option as well to tell me how to get from A to B and it was amazing, it knows all the bus/train route schedules and will inform you if there’s delays.
Ferries.
Bikes were always allowed except on Lake Iseo where bikes aren’t allowed on weekends. For that reason I suppose if you plan a route, doublecheck that the ferry allows bikes. I found that I never had to buy tickets in advance for these, there was always someone on/near the boat to help me and sell tickets.
City /Local Buses
I would not rely on these with the bike bag. Some have bike racks up front and will only take assembled bikes, some take only bags and some will be crowded and not have room anyway. Payment is easy to do on board with just a credit card. Tap once on their machine and you’re done.
Long Distance Buses
You would have to rely on these to reach many mountainous regions. They have accepted my bike bag every time. Prioritize regional trains when possible.
Regional Trains
They make lots of stops and can have random delays but they usually had plenty of room to put the bike/bike bag in the cars marked with a bike symbol. Buy tickets in advance when possible as stations sometimes had no employees and the 1-2 ticket machines can have queues of confused tourists that will make you miss the train. There’s some kind of confusing validation system that you also can get around if you buy it online whereas if you buy tickets at the machine and have to validate them you sometimes can’t even find their stupid machine. You don’t need a ticket to get on the trains but there’s some chance you will be asked by a worker and there’s apparently a huge fine if you don’t have a ticket or didn’t validate. I saw this person on about 10% of my train journeys so feel free to gamble.
Accomodations
Up to you and your budget where you want to stay. I mostly stayed in Airbnbs.
Airbnbs
The beauty of cycling trips is that you don’t have to stay in expensive and/or crowded cities like Rome/Venice/Milan. Find a midsized town near the mountains and you can stay in a way nicer place for half the price and do all the best riding. The two things I cared about were how close it was to a train station and grocery store.
Book well in advance. Italy has a lot of midsized cities with cheap Airbnbs ( 90-120cad/night for 2 bedroom ) and booking months in advance will allow you to get the best deals that are also near train stations. Check that they have AC if you travel in the summer. It was 35c+ at night in my bed in Bassano. Most other things you can work around but this will wreck you. Check with the host if bikes are ok indoors. This was an issue for a few listings. Do not be afraid to ask for early check-in or late check-out. This gained me many hours of riding time.
Ustaria Posta
This is where I stayed in the Dolomites. While quite a bit more expensive than Airbnb (180/night) with sharing a room, you got free breakfast buffet and 4 course meals daily served at 7pm. Food cost me about 25$/day on the trip so basically if you can share a room here it’s just 50-60$ more than airbnb. Single room would have been 200$+ so not worth it to me at that point but there’s not many options for cycling in the Alps and Dolomites and they are definitely bucket list places to visit.
Food / Water / Bathroom
Water is easy. There’s been great quality water at every Airbnb and Italy has tons of free water fountains scattered around. You won’t spot them easily while riding but you can check where they are with Googlemaps. It’ll be very rare that you’d be more than 5-10km from food or water. Cafes will typically refill you.
Bathrooms
Heard a lot about the paid toilets in Europe. I’ve seen a few of those but while out biking it was never a problem when stopped at a cafe to just use their bathroom for free. This might be more of a touristy area problem and less of a cycling trip problem.
Food
Loved stopping at bakeries/cafes on most rides. Expect to pay around 3-5 euros for a coffee plus pastry. Restaurants were not super cheap, 10-30 euro for a meal. Mainly stuck to grocery shopping and apps. There’s plenty of grocery stores with everything you’d want and prices are roughly the same as in Canada/ USA.
ToogoodtoGo is always a fun alternative to restaurants for me. It can be hit or miss but there’s often dozens of participating restaurants in most midsized Italian cities and since you have a bike you can easily reach them. I always pack a backpack with grocery bags. The time windows can be annoying and short but I’ve gotten amazing value and great quality from this.
Road Conditions
Italy has a lot of roundabouts. They are awesome and save tons of time but be careful as Italians love to race in/out of them.
Get disc brakes if you want to do lots of mountain riding. The roads are narrow, there’s endless blind corners and the gradients can get very steep with bad road surface on some of these descents. Rim brakes are much less of a problem in North America where the roads a less steep and the turns are wider with better vision.
Bicycle in red circle means “bikes not allowed”. Mainly for highways but highly recommend following that law because you don’t want to be stuck in a 10km highway tunnel with no shoulder.
Avoid the bike paths. That’s a given worldwide but 90% of the bike path network in Italy is complete garbage and strictly inferior to ride on than main roads. If you need to use Googlemaps to route somewhere just pick the “car” option. This might be a problem for long inter-city trips as it will put you on highways but will save your life if you ride through a city as otherwise it will create a complete jumbled mess of nonsense trying to keep you on bike paths. You’ll cross 20 streets and take 10 turns instead of just taking the one main street, it’s ridiculous.
<——— The roads are rough.
While big cracks and deep holes are rare, most of the roads are rumbly and have all these sewer grates and metal plates that create 2-3cm bumps. You can go over dozens of these on any given ride, it gets annoying. Bring shammy butter and use it…
The Roads are narrow and traffic is annoying. ———>
Most roads have no shoulders and when cars are stopped due to traffic or lights they often will block the lane. In descents there’s often no way to pass cars or get around cars, you will be stuck there going 20-30kph behind a tourist.
There’s a lot of tunnels.
You probably want a flashing red light on most rides you’ll be doing in mountainous regions or around the big lakes. While they felt generally safe they vary wildly in how well lit they are and none of them have a shoulder.
However I think Italy is cycling friendly enough that motorists are used to watching out for bikes in tunnels. Double However: Lot of the drivers will be tourists…
Everything is a blind corner.
Due to roads having no shoulder they basically hug every wall and shrub meaning you will not see any car coming from around a bend ever. Never veer off the center line and keep in mind there can be cars randomly jammed around any bend either parked for no reason or slowly braking through a switchback.
Plan on not going very fast on average when descending is involved.
Italy is old and the road network was designed for donkeys, not bikes.
Best places to ride
As a general rule, go anywhere there’s mountains and avoid any place that’s flat an inland. Avoid larger cities like the plague. There’s lots of cities where you can do many good rides for 7-10 days before you run out of new loops or places to go. I like to use pjamm to know where the toughest climbs are. I find most of the sites about the best rides are hit or miss or target completely different types of rider so you should just use your best judgment to figure out what’s great. Or ask a bike shop!
I’m venturing a guess that you almost cannot go wrong in just about any place you decide to stay within this mountain range. I loved Trento, Varese and Badia but there’s 10 more cities that would have been great as well: Bormio, Bolzano, Feltre, Belluno, Cortina, Villa Santina, Merano and many many others. The main problem is many of these are not easy to access with the train/bus network but worth it if you stayed more than 1.5-2 weeks in my opinion.
When to go and Weather (in the North )
I experienced amazing weather in the Alps where it was around 20-30c at the base of the climbs and 10-20c at the peaks. If you go outside of the months of June-August you might experience more random snow and storms. Tourism was not a big problem for cycling as you are not competing for hiking/parking reservations and won’t be stuck in traffic for hours. Summer months might me slightly higher prices but just don’t stay in the large tourist hubs, they suck for cycling anyway. I way overpacked when it comes to warm clothing.
I cannot speak for riding in the south but even near Venice and Bassano it was 35-40c and humid during most of the day so definitely don’t plan any flat/southern Italy bike trip outside of the shoulder months unless you hate yourself.
Final Thoughts
I haven’t biked in that many places in the world ( Hawai’i, Madeira, Canary Islands, basically all of Canada / USA ) but Italy is probably at the top of the list for me so far:
- Amazing landscapes, challenging climbs, tons of bike shops, affordable, easy to navigate in English, easy to get around with trains, lots to do off the bike. It’s big enough that you could spend a full year riding there every day before you’d seen most of everything. 9/10, would go back with no hesitation!
Bonus: Top rides
Dolomites
A bit remote but worth the detour, by far the most beautiful area I visited on this trip.
Passo Fedaia - Tres Cime - Alpe de Siusi - All the passes
A bucket list route for many but what makes it truly special is that bike museum! Don’t miss it.
Monte Grappa and Asiago Plateau
Bassano is a charming city and there’s so many ways up this climb and you can visit the nearby plateau as well for that alpine feel.
Perhaps a little daunting of a route at 200km long but this is one of the best lakes with options to cut the ride short with ferries.
Make sure you go on a weekday so you can visit the island in the middle and do that climb! Very underrated lake with less traffic than Como
Thanks for coming to my TED talk and I wish you many awesome bike adventures!