Italy and beyond....

[Leszek Vogt]

Looks like I'll veer the corner and would like to check out Europe for a month or so, tho Italy sort of plays a major role in this. I suppose Barcelona and Valencia would make a wonderfull distraction, so would Lugano and Lucerne. For good part of the time I'd anchor in Lyon, France and likely travel as far as Poland. I'm not the type to do tour travel....unless it's a specific city.

Hope to hear some interesting suggestions. Thanks.

Les

[prendt]

Looks like I'll veer the corner and would like to check out Europe for a month or so, tho Italy sort of plays a major role in this. I suppose Barcelona and Valencia would make a wonderfull distraction, so would Lugano and Lucerne. For good part of the time I'd anchor in Lyon, France and likely travel as far as Poland. I'm not the type to do tour travel....unless it's a specific city.

Hope to hear some interesting suggestions. Thanks.

Les

Why not to take for a good measure also Switzerland, Germany and the Czech republic? Do the Europe in one month, a piece of cake.

[tgtaylor]

A few years back (actually quite a few viz., - 1999) I did a bicycle tour that started in Madrid and ended in Rome. Madrid > Valencia > Barcelona, crossed the Pyrenees at Girona > Montpellier > Italy via the Little Saint Bernard Pass > Aosta > Genoa > Pisa > Rome. The ride from Valencia to Barcelona was especially nice: campgrounds on the left side of the road and the beach (Spanish Riviera) on the other side. Get your food and wine, go for a good swim and chow down on the beach. If you have the time and don't mind peddling, bicycle is the best (and cheapest) way to tour Europe. Unlike the States, campgrounds are cheap and plentiful.

Thomas

[prendt]

If you have the time and don't mind peddling, bicycle is the best (and cheapest) way to tour Europe.
Thomas

Right. Roads can be clogged with whole families touring Europe in this best way. Very popular. Oh, Europe!

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

For good part of the time I'd anchor in Lyon, France and likely travel as far as

Hello from France!

In order to give you useful advice, it would be better to know your wishes:
- are you looking for visiting cities, historical monuments, museums, urban things related to large format photography, or are you interested in the landscape (mountains or the countryside are plentiful around Lyon, in the direction of Italy!)
- do you intend to make trips to a given city, from Lyon and back (or Lyons, as it is named in English) ?

In Lyon there is a regional airport, but I have no idea of the connections and prices.
Lyon is also very well located on the French ("TGV") high speed train network, 2 hours by train to Paris and 2 hours to the south of France (Marseilles, Montpellier, ...)
So far, there is no direct high-speed train connection to Italy through the Alps, there is a project to build a direct Lyon-Torino train line through a long "base" tunnel, but this is just a project.

Recent de-regulation of air fares make the game a bit more complex when trying to compare train and plane. In the good old days, you could forget about taking the plane to connect two European cities of the same size as Lyon (the 3-rd largest city in France).

Train fares are sometimes more expensive now, whereas low-cost airlines connecting selected regional airports offer incredible bargains.
For example a friend of mine spent a nice week-end in Madrid with a plane ticket from Strasbourg, price for the return fare was 50 euros. Same applies to some connections like Brussels (Belgium) to Carcassonne (East Pyrenees) for less that 100 euro, impossible to do it by train or car at the same price !

Renting cars is still more expensive in France vs. the US, not taking into account very high prices for diesel or gasoline (or petrol, as they say across the Channel).

So: tell us more about what you are interested in, and it will be a pleasure to help you.

And regarding cycling in France, we have the privilege of a very dense network of secondary roads, something not found it England for example.
There is even a cycling route free of all motor vehicles connecting the Atlantic Ocean near Nantes in France to Budapest in Hungary. This cycling route goes through Besançon, my home-town.

And also: current regulations for local trains in France allow you to take your bicycle with you in the train, free of charge. This does not apply to high-speed trains, but does apply to some inter-city trains.
In France, local governments make efforts to promote this kind of tourism combining cycling and public transportation. Switzerland is ahead of us on this aspect, with a very dense network of small trains covering the whole Swiss territory.

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

Additional information
When planning a train travel all over Europe I use the German train travel planner in its "ASCII terminal 80 colums" style, not the decorated one ;)
http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/el

And for travel by car, by bicycle or on foot as well as for city maps I use the viamichelin travel planner
http://www.viamichelin.com/

For example if you look for a travel between Lyon (France) and Lucerne (Luzern, Switzerland), by car you'll have to decide whether you pay for toll motorways or not.
In France and Italy, most motorways are toll motorways, and in Switzerland, all motorways are toll motorways.
In France and Italy, you pay for each travel at toll stations, in Switzerland there is no toll stations, you have to buy a sticker ("vignette") valid for one civil year starting in January.
If you decide to go from Lyon to Lucerne by car without any toll, by standard roads, travel time is 9 hours. But the journey through the Alps, along the Geneva and Neuchâtel lakes, is magnificent.

Is you accept all toll motorways in France and Switzerland, travel time drops to about the half at 4:30, and the landscape will be as interesting as going by road, you'll avoid traffic jams in villages and cities.

By train from Lyon to Lucerne, travel time is about 5 hours; this is a nice example where train travel is very efficient in terms of saving time and providing safety and comfort; this is often the case for travels in Switzerland.

[tgtaylor]

For my trip I traced Hannibal's route into Italy (with the assumption that he crossed the Alps at the Little Saint Bernard Pass as suggested by an American Cavalry officer who exhaustively researched the path by horseback in the 1860's or thereabouts and published a book on his findings that was still in print at the time of my journey) carrying Michelin road maps for Spain, France, Italy, and packing a copy of Livy's War with Hannibal. Great fun. Nowadays one could probably get by with a tablet with all your reading material and music installed and access Google Maps at the Cafe's.

The great thing about touring by bicycle is that you are free to pull into a quaint village you spot along the way and tool through its streets and alleyways stopping to take a photograph whenever the opportunity arose and, finally, take an ice cream or soda break at the local café which usually has tables set-up outside. Great fun and you meet a lot of the locals that way. You're not a "tourist" when you're on bicycle.

Thomas

[Leszek Vogt]

Thanks much for the info so far. I should add that most likely I'll be with 3 other people in the 60's....so touring via bikes most likely will not work. I'm there too, but I'd take various defections on a bike...and the rest of the bunch tends to be more pampered. We may rent a car here and there, tho most often we would use local transit.

Les

[John Kasaian]

On our last trip to Europe we took the trains. I don't know if things have changed since, but the lockers were gone from the train stations, so there was no way to "check" your luggage if you want to go exploring for a few hours en route (so we had to carry our suitcases with us around Colmar) but otherwise train travel is very nice option and one of my favorite ways of getting around Europe. Another option in Switzerland is the postal bus system----the bus stops everywhere and you'll get to see some off the beaten path locations. There were seldom any other passengers on the bus I was on and if you hit it right with the driver maybe he'll let you blow the horn at the stops to call the locals to come pick up their mail.:)

[Turi]

Leszek, I'm form Venice and if you want to take nice pics I strongly suggest 3 or 4 days around the Venetian Lagoon on a houseboat. You can rent one at several locations and for as many people as you want. The deck is high enough above the water to see well the sorrounding and its nature. Once you are out of the main canals the water is flat enough for tripod and long exposures. If, on the other hand you are interested in architecture, well, you will be accompanied by millions of other tourist in the city. Above all pick the right time of the year: Summertime is unbareble in terms of people and tempertaure. Best is spring or fall.
Turi

[prendt]

Leszek, I'm form Venice and if you want to take nice pics I strongly suggest 3 or 4 days around the Venetian Lagoon on a houseboat. You can rent one at several locations and for as many people as you want. The deck is high enough above the water to see well the sorrounding and its nature. Once you are out of the main canals the water is flat enough for tripod and long exposures.

Indeed, it's especially true if you take pictures of people on the same boat as you are! Or, otherwise, if you love impressionism.