Any experience with VBT touring? Or bringing own bike to Italy?

[Crankin]

The reason we did our first 2 tours with Trek Travel was exactly the reason you stated. They had the exact bike I was riding at the time. I am not good with changes in mechanical things, so it was fine. But... we rode over lots of cobbles on road bikes, as well as rain in the Czech Republic and Austria. No one seemed to care, except me. Some people did rent the hybrids.
When we went to Quebec, we took our own bikes, since we drove. This year, we absolutely loved our tour company in Spain (Cycling Country), as they are a small, husband and wife owned business. But the 48 cm Orbea sucked for me. It had the same geometry as my bike as far as stand over, top tube, etc, but I couldn't reach the brakes from the drops. For someone who doesn't like descents to begin with, it was pretty miserable. We want to do their Portugal tour in 2012, but if they don't have a wsd bike with short reach levers, we will bring our own bikes. We are thinking of getting steel bikes with s and s couplers, for travel. It would be a second bike for us (or third) and would also be used at home, too.
VBT has good tours; I know someone who works for them, who has helped us lead our AMC New Members ride. But, their bikes stopped me from considering them. We are doing a tour of the Finger Lakes in NY this year, so we can have our own bikes. It's the same company that ran our Quebec tour and they are very low key. I wouldn't use them if I couldn't have my own bike, as they provide really low end Treks.

[bluebug32]

It looks like we have decided to do our own thing in Italy. Find great spots (like Lake Como, possibly San Remo or Riccione) and rent a bike there for a few days. We're researching other great riding spots/shops to rent high end bikes from. Does anyone have any recommendations?

[anakiwa]

We did a self guided tour through Cycle Italia a year and a half ago (in Tuscany) and loved it. They made all the lodging arrangements, transported gear, and gave us a route. Otherwise we were on our own. I have the same concerns about fit, so we took our own bikes (fortunately the tour started and ended at the same place so we were able to leave the boxes there- we did have to lug them around Florence some before/after). Flying with the bikes worked out fine (I would recommend hard cases- we bought one Thule and borrowed another- they worked so well we bought a second one this summer to take bikes to Colorado with us.) You also want to know what you're getting into fee wise- they all seem to change their policies regularly (when we went to Italy we took Air France- they were supposed to charge 150 dollars/euros each bike/each way depending on where you were- but someone misquoted it as $50- they honored that on the way out, and on the way back the person forgot to charge us at all, so I guess we got lucky). You also need to be able to take the bikes apart/reassemble them (my husband has gotten quite adept at it- I think he found some good instructions initially from Thule online- there might even have been a video demonstrating it). (Oh and make sure the pedal wrench goes in the bike box- we forgot this last trip and it got confiscated at security.)

[gnat23]

We took our own bikes and did our own rides in Tuscany. He flew with his in a hard-shell bike box, I shipped mine via FedEx in cardboard. We both flew back with our bikes (and he did some creative talking to convince the desk woman that it was actually a tandem bike in two boxes, so we only got charged once!)

My only addition to the conversation is this: it was nice to have my own bike there, but it was a pain to deal with. The cars are really tiny, so there was some rope involved to keep the trunk down and we couldn't leave it out of our sights anywhere. We had to lug the boxes up stairs and narrow paths to our bed and breakfasts, along with our luggage, and then they often did not have secure storage and/or space for them. My cardboard box got destroyed in the rain, so there was much tape involved to hopefully get everything back home.

If I were to do it again, I'd rent there.

-- gnat!