Expert: Lisa - 10/10/2009

Question
I would like to plan a trip to the southern tip of Italy and work my way up to Germany. I would prefer to hike from town to town and take a train from time to time or rent a bike if I can do so for a one way rental. I would love to camp as much as possible so hotels and hostels are only necessary when I get to the bigger cities. I prefer to experience the places I visit as opposed to just seeing them. I speak German and Spanish rather well and can brush up on my French enough to get us by when needed. Any suggestions as to where I need to start for such a journey would be greatly helpful. I am guessing I will need about a month for this adventure and am prepared to extend my stay if necessary. Thank you for your suggestions.

Answer
Hi Eric. Yes, you'd need at least a month if you plan on walking and biking and plan on covering two countries.

Here's a webite I found that does one-way bike rentals: http://www.bikerentalsplus.com There are probably others. Try googling Italy "bike rentals" "one way" and see if you can find others.

Books you need to get are Let's Go Italy and Frommers. These are great sources for camping, cheap places to eat and stay, walking tours, bike rentals and much more.

This website is a good source for backpackers: http://www.backpackeurope.com/

Here's a train travel website: http://www.raileurope.com/index.html

You're also going to need some good maps. Either go to a map store or look at maps.com. Get detailed maps that have ALL the roads big and small, not just highway maps. For now, you can use mapquest.com but you should have maps to take along.

If you want to see southern Italy, a good place to start may be Naples or Rome. These both have international airports. You should probably travel up the Adriatic side of Italy, since you're going to wind up in Germany. As far as  your itinerary goes, read about the various places in Southern Italy and from that, decide what you want to see. Start drawing up an itinerary. Make an outline starting with Day 1 Arrive in Naples. Write a summary of what you'd like to see in and around Naples and where you plan on staying and then move on to Day 2 and so on. You don't have to follow the itinerary exactly, but at least you'll have some idea of where you're going.

You might also want to just rent a bicycle in a particular town and ride around the country-side for the day. Think about it. If you rent a bike for transportation, you're going to need panniers since you can't ride a bike wearing a backpack. At least, I think you would want to.

Best of luck to you.

Lisa