Italy Vespa tour 2024
Recently we were lucky enough to travel to Italy and meet up with Canscoot, a Christchurch based scooter club. This trip had been planned for some time and a lot of thought and effort had gone into making it an adventure not to forget. We were fortunate to be able to call on the previous Italian tour experience of some locals, who recommended the itinerary and the accommodation options.
Basically, the touring group consisted of 10 riders and 2 support crew in a van. Various partners and wives joined the tour at different times to suit their travel arrangements. We arranged to all meet in Rome as the starting point to the tour. We stayed in a monastery for a couple of days and were escorted around the city by Roberto, our vespa tour guide from Bici Baci Rental and Tours. Roberto was very knowledgeable and passionate about Rome and the Italian culture, and we learnt a lot from him. We hired mainly Primavera scooters for the day tour and went to most of the touristy places there.
From Rome we got a train to Pisa to collect our scooters for the tour and the support van from The Vespa Rent Company. A local family company, within walking distance to the Pisa tower, they were well organized and had the Primavera 125 automatic scooters we would be riding. The Opel van was quite large for all of our luggage but as it happened, one of the scooters ended up in the back for a few days.
We were riding for 9 of the 23 days that we were in Italy, so we managed to see a lot – certainly too much to cover here. I wasn’t sure how the little 125 automatics would handle the trip but as it turned out, they were ideal for what we did. Not the most powerful or comfortable of scooters but they were very good on fuel and easy to ride. There was room under the seat for a helmet and some of them had luggage boxes on the back. The traffic, the roads and riding on the other side of the road, posed some problems for us, but the little bikes performed very well. My machine only had 6Kms on it when I got it, and we ended up covering around 2000kms for the trip.
Before we knew it, we were dropping the van and the bikes off in Florence. Some of the group ended up staying for a few extra nights there and the rest of us got a train to Venice where we relaxed and didn’t have to be anywhere but there.
Highlights for me were:
- Vespa Museum in Pontedera
- Ducati factory tour in Bologna
- Casa Lambretta collection in Millepini
- The ride to Passo del Chiodo
- Lake Como to Switzerland ride.
We met some great people and the tour group was fantastic. Our tour leader Craig did such a great job navigating and keeping us on track (and not getting lost too many times). Many thanks to Brian and the team that organized the trip and to Jane and Desiree who did the hard yards in the support Van.
If riding Vespa scooters in Italy is something you might want to do, then get in touch – Contact Us
Italy vespa tour 2024