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Online Resources for Italy
I am sorry if this has been covered to death, but I couldn't find online
resources for planning a trip to ride some of the Italian mountain passes. I found plenty of sites that offered tours but I am trying to do it by myself. I am looking for suggestions for online maps, ride reports, hotels that are bike friendly, towns to stay in, etc. Thanks... |
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#2
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Online Resources for Italy
Frank Drackman wrote: I am sorry if this has been covered to death, but I couldn't find online resources for planning a trip to ride some of the Italian mountain passes. I found plenty of sites that offered tours but I am trying to do it by myself. I am looking for suggestions for online maps, ride reports, hotels that are bike friendly, towns to stay in, etc. It would help if you named the passes or at least the area. As for maps, I would forget online maps and just order an appropriate set of the TCI (Touring Club Italiano) 1:200000 maps for the regions in which you are interested. All of the Dolomites and Alps can be covered with 4 maps: Veneto, Trentino, Lombardia, Piemonte. For online assistance, look at Google maps/Google Earth for the areas of interest. As for hotels, I have yet to find a hotel, inn, etc. in Italy that was not bike friendly. I am sure there are some, but they must be rare. They will accomodate one way or another, even the fanciest hotels. On our last trip we had various inns store our bikes in places like underground garages, the hallway of the owner section of the inn, a wine cave, a barn, storage sheds, an underground garage, the manager's office, and more. The best towns to stay in are the ones where you feel like stopping for the day, as long as there are facilities (lodging and food). We have pre-planned stops and stuck to the schedule, and pre-planned but altered as we desired on the way. The latter has worked best; more flexibility to handle exigencies. As for ride reports, start with Jobst's from the past 40 years or so. Check out the Trento bike pages. Do a Google search. We have found tons of information using these resources, and rather easily. - rick |
#3
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Online Resources for Italy
In 2004, we only had a hotel in Venice for two days before moving to Lido
(next time we'll skip getting a room in Venice). After that, we used Rick Steve's Italy Book and the internet, which was available free at a couple of the hotels, to make our reservations. Having the desk clerk at the current hotel call ahead and book a room at the next stop worked very well, also. I agree with Rick, the hotels were great when it came to dealing with bikes, and so were the trains. Pete "Rick" wrote in message oups.com... Frank Drackman wrote: I am sorry if this has been covered to death, but I couldn't find online resources for planning a trip to ride some of the Italian mountain passes. I found plenty of sites that offered tours but I am trying to do it by myself. I am looking for suggestions for online maps, ride reports, hotels that are bike friendly, towns to stay in, etc. It would help if you named the passes or at least the area. As for maps, I would forget online maps and just order an appropriate set of the TCI (Touring Club Italiano) 1:200000 maps for the regions in which you are interested. All of the Dolomites and Alps can be covered with 4 maps: Veneto, Trentino, Lombardia, Piemonte. For online assistance, look at Google maps/Google Earth for the areas of interest. As for hotels, I have yet to find a hotel, inn, etc. in Italy that was not bike friendly. I am sure there are some, but they must be rare. They will accomodate one way or another, even the fanciest hotels. On our last trip we had various inns store our bikes in places like underground garages, the hallway of the owner section of the inn, a wine cave, a barn, storage sheds, an underground garage, the manager's office, and more. The best towns to stay in are the ones where you feel like stopping for the day, as long as there are facilities (lodging and food). We have pre-planned stops and stuck to the schedule, and pre-planned but altered as we desired on the way. The latter has worked best; more flexibility to handle exigencies. As for ride reports, start with Jobst's from the past 40 years or so. Check out the Trento bike pages. Do a Google search. We have found tons of information using these resources, and rather easily. - rick |
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Online Resources for Italy
Rick wrote: As for maps, I would forget online maps and just order an appropriate set of the TCI (Touring Club Italiano) 1:200000 maps for the regions in which you are interested. All of the Dolomites and Alps can be covered with 4 maps: Veneto, Trentino, Lombardia, Piemonte. This is THE suggestion about maps. You might like to get the beautiful N.1 1/200000 TCI Atlas of Italy, instead of the separate maps, and carry xerox copies along. Moreover, that Atlas covers also a lot of Switzerland, as well as a good strip of neighboring Austria and France. As for hotels, I have yet to find a hotel, inn, etc. in Italy that was not bike friendly. I am sure there are some, but they must be rare. Agreed. However, here is one: Hotel Siusi in Siusi, near Bolzano. As for ride reports, start with Jobst's from the past 40 years or so. Be advised that Jobst is a tough cyclist and that things may be a bit tougher than you might be led to expect after reading his reports. Also, as a rule, major roads are never too steep in Italy (as compared to Austria, for example) but you might be surprised if you venture elsewhere. Sergio Pisa |
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Online Resources for Italy
"Rick" wrote in message oups.com... Frank Drackman wrote: I am sorry if this has been covered to death, but I couldn't find online resources for planning a trip to ride some of the Italian mountain passes. I found plenty of sites that offered tours but I am trying to do it by myself. I am looking for suggestions for online maps, ride reports, hotels that are bike friendly, towns to stay in, etc. It would help if you named the passes or at least the area. Thanks for the suggestions. I will order the maps. Sorry, I should have said that I am really early in the planning process. I don't know which climbs yet and would love suggestions. I am really slow but love to climb. Would it be possible, with a car for support, to stay at one hotel in Dolomites then move to another hotel in the Alps for base camps, or would I have to change hotels every day? |
#6
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Online Resources for Italy
Frank Drackman wrote: "Rick" wrote in message oups.com... Frank Drackman wrote: I am sorry if this has been covered to death, but I couldn't find online resources for planning a trip to ride some of the Italian mountain passes. I found plenty of sites that offered tours but I am trying to do it by myself. I am looking for suggestions for online maps, ride reports, hotels that are bike friendly, towns to stay in, etc. It would help if you named the passes or at least the area. Thanks for the suggestions. I will order the maps. Sorry, I should have said that I am really early in the planning process. I don't know which climbs yet and would love suggestions. I am really slow but love to climb. Would it be possible, with a car for support, to stay at one hotel in Dolomites then move to another hotel in the Alps for base camps, or would I have to change hotels every day? Love the Dolomites. Plan on spending at least 3-4 days there. You can survive without a car, using trains, buses, and the bike for transport if you like. Staying in one spot and riding is a bit easier in the Dolomites than in the Alps. In the Dolomites you could stay in Cortina and ride all the eastern passes, then move just a bit west to Arabba for the Sella ring and the western passes. The Italian Alps are a bit more stretched out. Bormio or Livigno is a good spot for some of the passes: Stelvio, Gavia, Motirola, and some of the passes in adjacent parts of Switzerland. But things are a bit stretched out and doing day trips as loops gets a bit more of a challenge; you would be doing loops of 80-100 miles, minimum, with significant amounts of climbing to return to the point at which you started. Possible, but make sure you are up to it. I prefer doing some minimal loaded touring so I can be flexible and stop when I want each day without worrying about getting back to a specific point, but it is all personal preference. - rick |
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Online Resources for Italy
Rick ha scritto: I prefer doing some minimal loaded touring so I can be flexible and stop when I want each day without worrying about getting back to a specific point, That's fine provided it is not high season, when you are not guaranteed to find lodging late in the afternoon stopping just anywhere. Plan to do it by, say, july 10th. Before we get to detailed suggestions, study the maps and read other people's reports. Sergio Pisa |
#8
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Online Resources for Italy
wrote in message oups.com... Rick ha scritto: I prefer doing some minimal loaded touring so I can be flexible and stop when I want each day without worrying about getting back to a specific point, That's fine provided it is not high season, when you are not guaranteed to find lodging late in the afternoon stopping just anywhere. Plan to do it by, say, july 10th. Before we get to detailed suggestions, study the maps and read other people's reports. Sergio Pisa Thanks guys. I ordered the atlas yesterday. I will study up and post more realistic questions in the future. |
#9
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Online Resources for Italy
Frank Drackman wrote
Would it be possible, with a car for support, to stay at one hotel in Dolomites then move to another hotel in the Alps for base camps, or would I have to change hotels every day? If you choose your location carefully, you could get two (or three) great climbs from the same base. Like Bormio is at the bottom of both Gavia and the west side of Stelvio (and one more less famous to the northeast). But not so convenient for the more famous (but less interesting) east side of Stelvio / Stilfserjoch. But lots of people who train seriously for big long climbs could do both Stelvio and Gavia in one day of good weather -- so if you get too many days of good weather, you might quickly exhaust the possibilities from one hotel. If you've got a car, something else to consider is sleeping inside it. Big advantage is that you can get out riding as early in the morning as you want, not worry about figuring out each hotel's checkout and car-park security procedures. I did that for several nights in the French Alps recently. My idea is that if I can't fall asleep easily in the car, I must not have climbed enough vertical that day on my bike. The other great thing about having a car is that you do not have to ride in the big mountains day after day. You can get on the autostrada and walk around some famous historic city to the south on the plain, like Verona or Venice, or do some very mellow and pretty riding through the "Brenta Riviera". Or the foothills in between. Or non-bicycling fun things in the Dolomites: hiking, "via ferrata", rafting -- Seems to me more variety is more fun, and a car opens up lots of possibilities. I don't know which climbs yet and would love suggestions. A lot of us have already offered them on this newsgroup. Speaking of "online resources", how about searching the newsgroup archives for previous years? A rather helpful resource (not online) is this book: "Cycling Italy", by Ethan Gelber and others (Lonely Planet, 2003). Ken |
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Online Resources for Italy
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