MOUNTAINS, VALLEYS, AND CANALS
Feel free to jump ahead to another section:
- Bolzano
- Day 1 – Adige River Valley to Trento
- Day 2 – Departing the Adige for Lake Garda
- Day 3 – Mincio River to Mantova
- Day 4 – Tour of Mantova
- Day 5 – Onward to the Po
- Day 6 – Ferrara and Adria
- Day 7 – Po Delta Park and into Chioggia
- Day 8 – Barrier Islands – Pellestrina and Lido
- Venice
- Conclusions
My friend Steve and I have been traveling together for about two decades. We met when I was running a home beer and wine supply store in Austin, TX and he came in wanting to get started brewing. Unsurprisingly, much of our travel has revolved around places with good beer and wine, like Belgium and Bordeaux, Oregon and Oktoberfest.
In 2016, things changed. He was settled into a relationship with Laura, who owned more bikes than me and had been touring for decades. We started talking about combining our annual trip with some bike touring.
I had never done an organized tour, and it sounded intriguing. We agreed it should be somewhere in Europe. None of us had spent much time in Italy, so we focused on tours there, eventually settling on a bike and barge tour of the northern part of the country. It would follow mostly flat terrain, starting in Bolzano, near the Austrian border. The first few days would follow the Adige River to Lake Garda, then the Mincio River to Mantova. From there, a canal barge would follow us through small towns in the Po River Delta, eventually reaching Venice. The Bolzano-to-Mantova section would be self-guided with hotel stays. The rest would be guided with lodging and dinners on the barge. The tour price was just over $2000 per person, including bike rental, lodging, luggage transfer, and meals on the barge. The total riding distance would be about 250 miles.
