Buying a bike in Rome! Help!

Hello,

I am traveling at the moment and am looking to buy a bike while in Rome . My friend wants to cycle to Florence and I would like to cycle to Naples. Can anyone give us some advice on where to get cheap, second hand bikes? and also if it is possible to cycle to these places from Rome and what route would be best.

Cheers Craig

Hi
the most famous second hand market in Rome is "porta portese" it is every sunday in trastevere.

Really i'm not sure that you could find a bike that you can use to move from Rome to Naples o Florence.
You could find some new good bike (really cheap also arounf € 80) if you check in some wholesales (decathlon, cisalfa ecc.).
bye

It's quite a hike from Rome to Florence for example and the terrain is quite mountainous. You could try plotting the route like this though.

• Go to Google Maps - Rome
• Top right of the map, click the "Terrain" link so that you can see what the terrain looks like.
• Then click the "Get Directions" link top left in the menu. Rome will be showing already in the bottom field, so type: "Firenze" (without quotes) in the field above that and then change "By Car" to "Walking" (it doesn't have a "Cycling" option).
• Finally, click the "Get Directions" button which will plot the route on the map.

You'll see it's 281km and will take you two days and ten hours to walk the distance. I don't know if Google expects you to do it without any sleep though. In any event, it'll serve as a rough guide of how long it's likely to take by bike.

I would imagine that any tourist office in Rome would be able to tell you where you could buy a secondhand bike.

P.S. "Firenze" is the Italian name for Florence.

[ Edit: Edited on 30-Apr-2009, at 06:27 by Blinq ]