Experience Plus! Bicycle Tours Celebrates 40th Anniversary Season with Pisa-to-Venice Tour that Started it all
OutdoorHub 07.25.11
FORT COLLINS, CO, July 25, 2011 – ExperiencePlus! Bicycle Tours that in 1972 was the first North American company to offer pedal tours in Europe (http://www.experienceplus.com/) announces a 40-year anniversary Pisa-to-Venice cycling trip June 6-17, 2012, hosted by two generations of the founding family.
The 12 day/11 night 40th Anniversary Bike Across Italy – Pisa to Venice tour is priced at $4,495 per person, double occupancy. The route covers up to 339 miles with daily distances averaging between 26 and 53 miles. See:
http://www.experienceplus.com/tours/tours.html?tid=562#itinerary
Cyclists can extend the adventure with Bicycling Venice and the Dolomites beginning in Venice June 17. It explores the sights, landscapes, cuisine and cultural diversity from the Veneto region into the mountains of northern Italy and includes one of the most famous rides in the Dolomites, the Sella Ronda. The tour is June 17-26, 2012, and it is priced at $3,650 per person, double occupancy with bicycle rental included.
See: http://www.experienceplus.com/tours/tours.html?tid=2706
Accompanying guests on the 40th Anniversary Bike Across Italy – Pisa to Venice tour will be four members of the Price family: Rick and Paola Malpezzi Price and daughters Maria Elena and Monica Price who in 2008 assumed ownership and management of ExperiencePlus! Bicycle Tours from their parents.
In 1971, Rick and Paola pedaled from Pisa to Paola’s hometown of Forli just for fun. The next year they ran their first commercial bicycle tour of Italy. The anniversary trip closely replicates that first ride four decades ago.
It begins in Tuscany in the walled city of Lucca, stops in Pisa and at nearby Lago Massaciuccoli where Puccini wrote many of his operas, continues to Vinci, the birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci and includes a day in Florence. The landscape changes after the Etruscan village of Fiesole, and once over the Apennines guests ride into the agricultural bounties of fruit trees, sunflowers and vegetables to Dante’s tomb in Ravenna and on to Ferrara, the bicycle capital of Italy. From the Po River delta the journey ends in Venice.
“No matter which direction you take it (Venice to Pisa or Pisa to Venice) we love the trip but even our own family is split as far is what the favored direction is,” said Maria Elena Price. “My sister Monica and father Rick like Venice to Pisa because you have some nice flat days to get warmed up before you reach the Apennines and the Tuscan Hills. My mother Paola and I prefer Pisa to Venice because ending in Venice is simply magical.”
Price added that the Pisa-to-Venice itinerary is one “our long-time customers will remember fondly as some have done it multiple times.”
Said one Colorado couple who have notched 15 tours with the company, “We think Pisa to Venice is hard to top in terms of scenery, food and wine, cities and towns to visit, the art and culture, and the wonderful people of Italy.”
Another alumni couple adds, “The first trip we took was in 1994; it was the Pisa to Venice trip and we were lucky enough to have the whole Price family with us then. We were forever hooked!”
