Bike Touring Pisa, Lucca and Florence in Tuscany | Cycling in Italy | European Bicycle Tour

Our bicycle tour in Tuscany got started off with us arriving by boat into Livorno on the west coast of Italy. Since it was night I’d phoned ahead to a camping at Calombrone about 10km. From there the plan was to cycle through Tuscany and visit Pisa, Lucca and Florence or Firenze before heading into the hills.
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Bike touring in Italy is hard! The roads are very busy, there are few campsites and the ones that do exist don’t cater that well for people in tents. Despite that we had a brilliant first few days cycling in Italy. Pisa is super busy but definiley worth visiting, but Lucca us brilliant, the walled city must be visited and explored and it’s super bicycle friendly. We dined out on pizza vibes and gelato. We also did our first wildcamping next to the Arno River before we reached Florence! Wildcamping Italy is a bit easier in France but still sketchy and no proper legal like in Scotland.

We managed to get a day trip to Florence and explored the city with our fuly loaded touring bikes, they can be a bit heavy and awkward but it was a great day checking out the big sites and enjoying some more pizza.

After words we took the via Bologna into the hills which would take us over the mountains into the Po valley, from there we’d start cycling East towards Slovenia and the Julian Alps.
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in late June 2018 we just cycle burn the coast of Corsica and we were now on route to Italy which would be our second country on a six-month cycling adventure after almost two and a half months ish of being in France I couldn’t wait to start the next part of the journey new food language culture new maps to buy it’s a really special feeling when you’re about to start tearing a new country I knew it was gonna take us a over comfort zone especially the language site but I hadn’t quite anticipated just how comfortable we’ve been cycling in France we arrived into the port of Livorno around sunset something I love about these ferries that they let you ride straight off the boat rather than having to walk them off like you do in the carmack ferries in Scotland off the boat we tried to get her bearings I’d already phoned the head tech website in kallenbrunner which is about 10 kilometres away it was a bit stressful so we ended up getting caught up around some motorways in these big industrial zones but eventually got to the camp and it was fine setting up immediately there was a different vibe in the campsite there’s hardly any tents or pitches and it’s mostly bungles which I find quite weird you also had to pay for hot water which I was 100% not into the next day we set off towards pizza we still didn’t really have a plan but we roughly knew that we were heading towards Florence and then from there north east towards slovenia once we got to pisa we did what everybody else seems to do which is go to the place with the leaning tower this is basically one of these cities that is completely dominated by a very focused tourist attraction it’s pretty wild how busy the terrorist and the rest of the city is it’s fine but it’s hard to get away from the vomit of tourists at everywhere everything is just so geared towards people visiting that one little spot in the say very much like agra is in india that the whole city seems to just support the industry of visiting the Taj Mahal where they celebrate her construction which I totally agree with everything in your script I just think there’s some waste waste of it it was time that’s very busy we were all here taking very original photos just like we have the area of Tuscany we are not really sure what we’re gonna go we think we’re gonna head up towards the back and then Florence and then over some big house but we don’t really know because we haven’t planned anything and we find out that there are not many there are not many states in the area so we’re gonna be trying some more war showers so that’s all for now when we started trying to plan out the route for the next few days in Pisa I quickly discovered that unlike in France where almost every town has a municipal camping Italy has next to none a tiny fraction compared to France there’s only really ones near the coast and then some of the more mountainous areas and even then there’s a lot of places that just catered for bungalows and caravans and not really for people pitching tents this instantly started to stress me out since we not really well camped that much we didn’t have that experience under our belt we’ve been so comfortable in France just going to campsites and knowing that there was always gonna be camping drains wherever we went there was no this pressure that not only did we have to plan out a route in a new country with a different language but we had no idea where we’d be staying nice night it was a bit of time to adapt to this new way of traveling we opted for an air B&B and look up there wasn’t too pricey as you come into the city there’s a big fort wall that was a lovely discovery to find that you can cycle right through and up onto the city walls we cruised around and found the apartment after some serious language barriers with the Russian granny who welcomed us we reluctantly tied her baek’s up outside and got all our bags up into the flat look it easily makes it onto the lists on the base that he’s from the trip it’s a total of April walking and talking it’s beautiful vibrant it’s also not full of tourists which is a big plus for me we were walked about to say he got some pizza and then stalled around the city walls as the Sun set before heading home and getting an excellent night’s sleep the next morning we planned out a route to Florence the idea was that we’d try and find a place that was nearby to the city where we could Wilde camp so the next day we’d have lots of time to explore the city before moving on into the mountains the host told us that the water pipes in the city of Lucca was so bad that everyone used these big communal war offerings for drinking water we filled up our water bags and bowls the seem pretty common throughout Italy and I you really enjoyed that there is this old school water cooler vibe [Music] in order to get to Florence from liquor we’d hope to find the Ural fail or five route if you look at Europe and type in cycling routes you can see there’s these things called the Euro Velo routes and from I kind of bird’s-eye view they look amazing but actually they’re so dependent on country to country involvement in the project so some places there’s sign posted really well there really well thigh routes other places not so much we did find reminiscence of the Euro below five route in that section but honestly we’re on offered so much it was just so confusing and was just slowing us down so much we reached the Arno River which would then take is all the way through forums as we cycled along the river we started seeing some good places for camping and eventually found our first world counts book I was super a pair about this so I even made this eat dinner and put up the tent right at the end just before it got dark for fear of being spot even getting told to move on we were lucky because it just started raining afterwards but we got a really good night’s sleep even though I was pretty scared about it I’ve well kept lots in Scotland before but something about doing it in mainland Europe just made me feel really nervous I know it’s mostly fine and we did do it a few times throughout the trip in each country but all in all it’s just not something I enjoy that much I reckon if I was on my own or even with a friend I feel much more comfortable with it but being with Eliana I feel so responsible about as being safe and the risk of as well camping or wishes may be really really nervous but despite that pretty much everywhere camping experience we had was fine apart from one time in Bulgaria which I’ll get to a few videos down the line [Music] in the morning we got up and packed well the mess ribbon but it quickly turned into a beautiful day the souls of ever enter city stopping off along the way fell off a water bowl at Parc Farrington neither of us has been to Florence afore and admittedly I hadn’t learned much from what since edges sure it was a really spectacular place to visit although extremely busy if Pisa had a very focused area of mass tourism it feels like the whole city of Florence has been engulfed by it’s hard to find anything that isn’t mob there are so many Americans there as well getting pure overwhelmed by everything everyone just seems to be walking about streets not being attention to any where they’re going genuinely all the taxis have a constant beeping noise like a band backing up because people just walk onto the roads without looking talking about with our fully loaded touring bikes with a big hassle but I think we were both content with just visiting for a few hours and then moving on message my friend Paul to get the best coffee spot and best pizza place but he quickly supplied and we headed for them just as a side note if you’re interested in photography and street photography or in Glasgow Paul has a great Instagram page that should definitely check out I’ll put a link for it in the description after months of disappointing pizzas in France the pizza in Italy obviously was so much better it also gives a chance to wash in their sink and brush our teeth which is kind of gross for other customers but what are you gonna do what are you gonna do about it we washed in your sink get over it we then screw the boat got a coffee and I got a really banging sticker from a bake and then we went to a bake shop to get some root recommendations for answers at the base of a big bunch of hills which have a million roots to choose to go over we were told that the beer bolonia would be ideal for us so we set out lazily towards that around 4:30 in the afternoon if lemon wasn’t too rough and it was fun to get back into the hills again we find a good campsite that was more like what we’ve been used to in France it was in this place near Big L or jello Manuel or who knows the campsite was great anyway I had toilet paper and toilet seats which is a very very rare occurrence when you’re touring in Europe at the campsite there was also this Caravan couple who spotted our bikes and then invited us to dinner with them Giuseppe and Phil Bo were lovely and we spent that evening pasta drinking Prosecco and having biscuits and just chilling out fovea had been taking English classes but also Liliana could just all of a sudden miraculously speak Italian I think she studied it a bit in school but because it’s so close to Romanian and French is also a Latin language she seemed to pick it up almost instantly which was a bit bizarre for me it really made communicating in Italy much much easier well at least for me anyway because I didn’t have to do anything we told your second fovea what we were going to be traveling to Italy and they even invited us to come and visit them and their time not too far off from the rough route that we were gonna be going this gave us a good destination to start heading towards but basically the plan was that we go to Bologna then with Ireland hall past Venice in order to avoid the big huge industrial and farming areas that are in this part of Italy after which we’d stopped off in a turn before then heading into the mountains in Slovenia thank you so much for watching this video I hope you enjoyed it and I hope if you did you’ll give us a like and share this video and even subscribe if you haven’t already and I hope you look forward to the next episode as we continue cycling through Italy ciao [Music]