You'll Find Flat Rides, Great Food and Wine in Italy's Emilia-Romagna Region

If you think that the Netherlands is the only place for easy, relaxed bicycle rides, think again.  The Art Cities of Italy's Emilia-Romagna are some of the most bicycle-friendly cities in Europe.  Add to that the great food and classic wines of the region and you have a perfect destination for a self-guided bicycle tour.  The cities of Ferrara, Modena, Forli, Cesena, Faenza, and Ravenna all have launched aggressive campaigns to attract bicycle tourists.  The web sites linked to these cities have itineraries, suggestions for lodging, and lots of helpful information for planning your tour.

This region also affords easy access to the foothills of the Apennine Mountains with a little more challenging rides for those who wish.  Add to that a number of "agriturismi" in the region for inexpensive lodging and you are set.  

Hotels and Bicycles: What Took So Long

The New York Times reports again in its Sophisticated Traveler edition Sunday, Sept. 27, 2009 of more and more hotels offering free bicycles. Park Hyatt is one which announced its new "Bicycle Valet" initiative on Facebook July 20th.

According to the Facebook announcement, "the Park Hyatt Bicycle Valet program will be complimentary at most Park Hyatt locations with a refundable deposit." The service includes use of a lock, helmet, lights, pump, kickstand, bottled water, and map." Free of charge for up to four hours! Now that's our kind of hotel.

Bicyle Paths, Routes and Logistics in France

France is arguably one of the best places in the world to ride a bicycle, primarily because of the dense network of rural roads and because of complete coverage of the entire country by Michelin maps at a scale of 1:200,000. Finally, the French government tourist office has provided an online resource to help you plan.

In addition check out the resources on the EuroVelo website.

Surprisingly, despite their centralized government, the French have done a terrible job of helping you find a hotel. There is no centralized data base of hotels in France to help you plan your bike tour. Michelin Red Guides are great, but contain only 60-70% of the lodging facilities in France. Normally they'll leave out the cheaper hotels or pensions - often the ones cyclists are looking for.

Logis de France, however, a marketing consortium of small, private hotels in France has a wonderful online resource where you can search for lodging using an interactive map of France. It is great for planning a bicycle tour. Give it a try!

Lodging and Logistics for a Bicycle Tour in Germany

We wrote about renting bicycles in Germany in an earlier post and we just posted a note on lodging resources for cyclists in Italy. This post will direct you toward planning resources for routes and lodging in Germany.

If you are planning a bike tour in Germany you'll eventually want to look at the Deutscher Allgemeiner Fahrrad-Club, one of the best bicycle advocacy groups in the world.

For lodging for bicyclists in Germany click here. This page is English, but eventually you'll need to exercise that high school German as you explore their site.

For bicycle routes in Germany click here.

For a great resource on bike touring guidebooks, we've written about the German series "Bikeline" in an earlier post.

Resources for Accommodations on your Italy Bicycle Tour

The top image is of a farm house accommodation in Tuscany (an "agriturismo") while the bottom image shows bungalows in a campground near Rome.

If you are bicycling by yourself or if you are camping you can often "wing it" in finding a place to sleep at night. But as we've explained elsewhere, "when you are organizing a ride and you have one or ten other people, you need answers to questions like:
1) How long is today's ride?
2) How high is that mountain pass (or, from the engineer, "what's the total vertical today?")
3) Where are we sleeping tonight?
4) Where's the best lunch stop today?
. . . and on and on and on."

So here are a few resources for finding that lodging in advance. And even if you don't book in advance (since many people prefer not to be locked into a specific destination) you can at least get an idea of what is available.

Italian Hotel Directories:

ENIT - the Italian Government Tourist Board has the most comprehensive data base of Italian hotels. Theoretically, it is comprehensive, ranking all hotels in Italy by star class and location. It helps to know your Italian geography a bit (especially the Regional, Provincial and Communal - township - hierarchy). Using this you can find a hotel almost anywhere in Italy. And, there's an English version!

Here is an example in finding a hotel in or around Palermo, Sicily:
Type Palermo into the "Town" field and click "search."
You'll find a pretty blank screen that offers you 70 hotels in Palermo and "hotels in the municipality of Palermo." Click on the "70 hotels in Palermo" text and you'll find a list of those hotels and a further list of 40 municipalities. Both lists are very useful in finding lodging in the Palermo region. Click here to see that page.

Bicycle Friendly Hotels, Farms Lodging, and Pensions in Italy

"Albergabici" is a portal that gathers hotels, pensions, farms (agriturismi), hostels and a few campgrounds that claim to be friendly to cyclists. It is sorted by Region, then province and town. The lodging lists can then be sorted by type of lodging (4 star hotel, bed and breakfast, agriturismi, etc.)

Here's the page for Palermo.

Hotels that Include Bicycles - What Bicycle Would you Like with that Room?

Here's an update from the NY Times on hotels in Europe that offer bikes. The article, by Jane Margolies was published May 3, 2009 in the electronic edition.

Remember that innovative hotel that offered you a non-smoking room years ago? Well, now you can ask for a bicycle with your room!

Hilary Howard reported in the NY Times Dec. 21, 2008 that some hotels and hotel chains now offer the option of a bicycle along with the room.

Here are just a few (please let us know if you find others!)

The Bowery in NY City
The Gansevoort South in Miami
The James in Chicago
The Element in Lexington, MA
And according to Howard, all future Element Hotels will include free bikes!

Of course, this is nothing new for us here in Fort Collins, Colorado as the Armstrong Hotel has been offering crusier bikes to its guests for several years now.

The Broadmoor, in Colorado Springs doesn't provide free bikes but you can rent them.

In Portland, OR: Hotel Jupiter will rent you a bike for a nominal $10 for 4 hours and $20 for 12 hours. Just give them a call: 503-230-9200 or drop in to their web site at www.jupiterhotel.com.

Near Atlanta, GA: Callaway Gardens offers bicycles for rent on their grounds.

In Europe:

Germany: Berlin - Hotel Gates
Belgium: Brugges - several hotels offer bicycles

We're working on building this list so please post a comment if you find hotels that provide free bikes or rental bikes at a nominal cost.