Planning my (first) Euro tour, advice welcome

Originally Posted by theenglishman

Venice in a morning? If you're going to ride all the way to Venice at least spend a full day there. Medievals built a city in the middle of a lake, because they had the cash. It's a stunning place that deserves more than an hours visit.



Like others said, have vaigue goals and just go where you please. Then when something you didn't plan for happens (puncture, hangover, seriously hot chick takes you home) you're not cutting something out.

I'll be staying at lake Garda and going over to Venice only a few miles! Visit a couple of times maybe spend a night there and have a good pish up!

Bring on the summer!!!

Get a GPS, even if just a budget car one and some kind of holder. I rode across Belgium / Germany (was a little tour tacked onto the end going to the Belgium GP) and spent quite a bit of time lost due to the rest of the world not signing anything properly (actually, Germany isn't bad to be fair). Normally in the UK I enjoy navigating by map and intuition but when you have just found out that you have gone 20 miles in the wrong direction due to missing a turn and / or the confusing EU route numbers vs the local ones it's rather annoying.

That said, some of the most fun I had was when I got side-tracked and found myself riding the road up the side of the Rhien towards Koblenz which was full of motorbikes and very obvious motorbiking spots.

I'd drop some of the 'places it would be nice to visit' off the list e.g. Monaco. Concentrate on making the journey and the roads memorable, you can hit those places up for next to nothing if you book a flight far enough in advance.