Munich to Venice

[lozcs]

Looking at doing this over the Summer.

West Midlands based and found a flight from Birmingham to Munich with Monarch for less than £100 on 29th May with bike.

Looking at taking 5 days so struggling to find direct flight back from Venice to Birmingham late on 2nd June or anytime on 3rd.

Any tips? Thanks.....

 

[lozcs]

Just looking at train back from Venice 20:00 arrives in London 12:30 next day might be an option £111 but have to call to add bike wonder how much extra that will be!....

 

[Crankarm]

You need a travel agent .

 

[robjh]

You'll be OK on the Eurostar from Paris - need to reserve on their website, I can't remember the price but it's not crazy - but the Venice-Paris leg looks less hopeful. A good starting point for all sorts of rail enquiries is http://www.seat61.com/, and this is what they say about the Thello trains, which includes the Venice-Paris route (my italics in the text):
Luggage, bikes & animals on Thello trains...

There are no baggage weight limits, you can take pretty much what you like as long as you can carry it, although a limit of two large items and one smaller item is quoted by Thello. You simply take your bags on board with you and put them in your compartment, on the various racks. Bikes, surfboards and skis aren't carried, although it is likely that semi-dismantled bikes concealed in bike bags as ordinary luggage may be OK. Dogs, cats and other small animals are carried free if they weigh less than 5Kg and are in a basket, cage or container no bigger than 50cm x 30cm x 25cm and as long as no other passengers sharing your compartment object (it may be better to reserve a whole sleeper compartment). Guide dogs are accepted, but otherwise larger dogs aren't carried. Left luggage offices at stations in Paris & Italy.


Also the Trenitalia site doesn't show this train as allowing bikes.

Of course you could be lucky and find the train conductor turns a blind eye to a bike in your compartment, but that may be risky - what do you do if they say no?

Here is a link to the Trenitalia site showing which trains take bikes : http://www.trenitalia.com/cms/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=872311e84819a110VgnVCM1000003f16f90aRCRD
-from Venice they only give Geneva and Munich as destinations, which I guess makes a connection to London a bit harder.

Years ago you could also send a bike as unaccompanied luggage and it would turn up within a day or two of your train, but I haven't found any info showing whether that still exists.

It's a shame, as the train should be a great way to travel, and avoid all the faff of bagging/boxing bikes for flights, hanging around for hours in airports etc.

 

[rich p]

Fly from Venice to Stanstead/Luton?Gatwick/Manc etc and train over here back to Brum?
Treviso has an airport which may have better timed flights to Brum.
I did a fair bit of that route a few years ago and as an alternative you could do worse than tweak it by heading for Garmisch-Partenkirchen from Munich and following the fantastic Via Claudia Augusta. This ancient route splits at Trento with one branch heading south for Verona and the other east to Venice through superb mountains and on an essentially downhill first class cycle path. Just a thought, as it saves you heading over the hills from Rovereto to the underwhelming eastern road beside Lake Garda.
Feel free to ignore this as I appreciate you were asking for travel rather than route advice!

 

[rich p]

The Trento to Venice route is worth bearing in mind if you're pushed for time as it'll be a day quicker

 

[andym]

I've not done Venice to London, but Verona to London is probably close enough.

If you want to do it by train then I'd recommend taking the DeutschBahn-ÖBB services that run to Munich via the Brenner Pass and Innsbruck, and then the sleeper to Paris Est and then Eurostar. There's a timetable here (pdf). (Sorry I couldn't find a link in English about these services but there must be information somewhere on the www.bahn.co.uk site.

The journey is fairly time-consuming but IMO much more pleasant, and less stressful than flying.

You could use the trenitalia regional services via the Brenner Pass but the DBB-ÖBB service is quicker and less hassle (and probably cheaper).

It isn't cheap though: the fares themselves are reasonable enough (if you book ahead) but bear in mind that you pay a whopping £30 for taking the bike on the Eurostar and a more reasonable €10 for each leg on the DBB.

There are loads of spaces for bikes on the sleeper service, but only two on the trains to/from Munich.

The other gotcha is that you can't book the bike spaces online - but the Deutsche Bahn call centre (UK number) will sort you out.

Bikes (even in bags) are specifically prohibited on the thello services. I did manage to get way with it on the services that were run by the predecessor company, but having narrowly avoided being thrown off a service and spent the night sharing my couchette with my bike I really wouldn't recommend taking the risk - especially when DBB-ÖBB provide a good-quality, bike-friendly alternative.

 

[lozcs]

Thanks for the info guys...

Although I'd prefer to return by train it looks like the girls might now be flying out to Venice and spending a few days there before all flying back together...

Currently found reasonable flights with Monarch

BHX-Munich 1st July one way
BHX-Venice Return 6th-9th July

Looks like it could work....

 

[midliferider]

Hi lozcs
Can I ask you, how are you going to take your bike on the plane?
Since you are not doing a circular route, how would you take your bike bag from the start to the finish?