Tandeming in Italy
 

Not entirely sure that's a real verb up there in the post title, but my wife and I are planning an Italian trip this fall and we hope to do some tandem riding in and around the cities of Assisi and/or Florence. There's lots of route advice elsewhere on the web, but I'd like to get a sense of how practical a goal this is. How easy is it to rent tandems (ours doesn't fold and I'm not lugging it around Europe)? How easy is it to manoeuvre these big bikes through small Euro spaces and narrow Euro roads? Is this a practical plan or am I just indulging in some kind of A-Year-In-Tuscany fantasy here? Many thanks in advance,

Bob

We were riding around Tuscany last year on our tandem. We didn't see too many tandems so I have no idea if you can rent a tandem there. I have vague memories of this question coming up at tandem@hobbes every few years. As for Florence and Tuscany, they are fundamentally no different than any other medieval towns in Western Europe. Streets are narrow and in the bigger/more popular areas like Florence, Pisa and Sienna, full of cars. Unlike North America, the Italians drives carefully around cyclists (for the most part). Roads are similar to those in France though not quite as thoroughly marked or mapped. In other words, if you have ridden in other Western European countries, it's not that different. Stay off the main roads. Stick to the secondary or tertiary roads and you will have a good time riding there.

We've ridden our tandem in several European countries, including Italy. Tandems may not be as maneuverable as single bikes, but are still way better than the cars that use the same roads, so we've never had a problem in that respect, and I wouldn't worry about it.

Italian drivers do some mad things, but they seem to treat cyclists quite reasonably, so I also wouldn't worry about that too much. In fact, I would fear drivers in most European countries less than those in North America because the North Americans fall asleep at the wheel far more often due to their roads typically being straight, long, boring, distances between towns being further, and driving distances in general being so much greater than in Europe. I'll always take a narrower, more twisty European road with a village every few kms, and so with mostly alert drivers on it over a wide but straight North American road full of drivers only half paying attention.

Finding a place to rent a tandem in that area may be the biggest challenge, and unfortunately I don't have any tips for that region.

Try this. http://www.bikerentalsplus.com/
It looks like a pretty good company. If you choose them, report back, as I'd be interested as well.

Every once in a while United Airlines does something truely amazing.

Last November we booked flights for a trip to Germany this coming fall. A couple weeks ago on May 18th, UAL send an email stating our itinerary had changed. Our trip out had changed a few minutes here and there, but our return trip had us landing in one airport some 10 hours after the next leg departed. Now this is the genius scheduling on their part... when we called UAL to have the issue fixed, we where told that more than one of our rescheduled flight legs no longer existed! Holy Cow Batman, is this outsourcing hell?!

I can't help with a tandem rental, but this might help with routes. We used this company several years ago and were very pleased https://www.rotalis.de/en/biketours/...ria/index.html