Florence to Rome on touring bikes in 4 days

[lunamoth]

Hi

My friend and I used google earth to map out a bike trip from Florence to Rome. I will have more details later about the route, where we stayed, and who we rented bikes from but I thought I'd post our little movie to get you motivated (or discouraged). :)

http://www.solidmedia.com/italy_small.wmv

enjoy (it's about 25 minutes long)

-Laura

[lunamoth]

We rented bikes from:

http://www.randotrek.com/

It was about 150 euros each for 6 days of rental. They were great. They met us outside of Termini station in Rome with the bikes and paniers and kept our extra baggage until the end of the trip. We then took a train to Florence (don't forget to pay the extra bike transport fee of 3 euros each or get an 8 euros ticket plus the 3 euro transfer fee as we did).

They retrieved the bikes in Anguillara Sabazia and made sure we got on the right train back Rome. You could try riding all to way into Rome but they advised against it due to high traffic.

This is where we booked rooms http://www.hostelworld.com/ in advance for each of the nights listed below. It's better to book in advance because you'll be tired and you don't want to have to deal with finding lodging. Also, print out a couple of maps of each city, far away and close up to your lodging so you can find it when you roll into town. All roads lead to Rome (heh) so a larger map of Italy wasn't really needed. Just a list of the sequential towns.

I would recommend trying to do this route in 6 or 7 days with a day off in the middle instead of the 4 days staight which left us riding 5-7 hours a day. There are alot of hills and paniers aren't light. :)

Rome - Friday - July 14th -
Florence - Saturday - July 15th
Florence - Sunday - July 16th
Florence - Monday - July 17th
Siena - Tuesday - July 18th
Torre Alfina - Wednesday - July 19th
Viterbo - Thursday - July 20th
Rome - Friday - July 21st
Rome - Saturday - July 22nd

Here's our actual route town by town..

Florence to Impruneta - 14 miles
Impruneta - Greve - 9.7 miles
Greve - Castellina in Chianti - 12 miles
Castellina in Chianti - Siena - 14 miles
Siena - Ponte a Tressa - 8.7 miles
Ponte a Tressa - San Quirico d'Orcia - 13 miles
San Quirico d'Orcia - Torricella - 23 miles
Torricella - Torre Alfina - 18 miles
Torre Alfina - Bolsena - 12 miles
Bolsena - Montefiascone - 9.1 miles
Montefianscone - Viterbo - 10 miles
Viterbo - Ronciglione - 14 miles
Ronciglione - Sutri - 4.5 miles
Sutri - Tevignano Romano - 7.2 miles
Tevignano - Anguillara Sabazia - 8.5 miles
Anguillara Sabazia - Rome - 25 miles

It was a great trip. I know that Randotrek does self guided tours that may get you off the Cassia more (busy highway in Italy)
but you live and learn. ;)

Hope you found this info useful.

-Laura