Some cities only make sense from the saddle of a scooter.
Which Rome sidecar run stops for coffee. What a Vespa costs for a day in Chianti. Whether a Saigon supper ride is worth the helmet hair. Reviews of the scooter tours and rentals worth the money, city by city.
Four rides that make the case for two wheels.
A sidecar through Rome after dark, Chianti at Vespa pace, supper in Saigon at six addresses, and a castle hill taken the easy way. What each one costs and what riders say afterwards.
01Rome after darkVespa Sidecar Tour By Night with PickupA driver takes the saddle, you take the chair, and the fountains go past at head height with nobody else on the cobbles.
02Through the gatesFlorence Vespa Tour: Tuscan Hills and Italian CuisineThe city gate, then cypress roads into the Tuscan hills, with lunch waiting at the far end of the ride.
03Saigon, eleven stopsFood Tour by Scooter with Eleven TastingsOn the back of a local rider through traffic that looks impossible from the pavement, stopping wherever the cooking is good.
04Prague on fat tyresFat Tire E-Scooter Guided TourWide-tyre electric scooters handle the cobbles and the castle climb, so the hills stop being the deciding factor.
Six cities built for a scooter, whoever is steering.
Cobbles, river roads, market lanes and hill climbs. These six put more riders on the road than anywhere else on the site, and each one has a best way in.
Vespa, electric or sidecar: three very different days out.
The machine decides the day. A Vespa asks you to ride and rewards you with distance. An electric scooter asks nothing and covers a city centre. A sidecar asks even less, and puts you a foot off the cobbles with a driver who knows where to stop.
Italy invented this, and still rides better than anywhere.
Three Italian days, three different machines. What it costs to get on each one, and which town it starts from.
The scooter rides more travellers take than any others.
Every ride reviewed →What fills up first across the whole site, and what earns each one its place near the top.
1
Ninh Binh HIGHTLIGHT & HIDDEN GEM Tour From Hanoi: Skip-The-Line
Spend 10 to 11 hours exploring Ninh Binh from Hanoi with a group capped at eight. You’ll ride by boat through Tam Coc or Trang An, climb 500 steps at Mua Cave, eat at a riverside home-style restaurant, visit Hoa Lu and Bich Dong Pagoda, and ride pillion through village roads. Guides such as Q, Louis, Tim, and Huy are known for keeping the full day lively and well organized.
From · $89
Read our review →
2
Florence Vespa Tour: Tuscan Hills and Italian Cuisine
from $78
3
Scooter Tours of Red Rock Canyon
from $135
4
Vespa Sidecar Tour By Night with Pickup
from $146
5
Rome Morning Vespa Sidecar Tour in Rome with Cappuccino
from $163
6
Budapest Small-Group Guided Tour on MonsteRoller e-Scooter
from $72
7
Food Tour by Scooter with Eleven Tastings
from $28
8
Chianti Vespa Tour with Lunch from Florence & E-car Option
from $125
In Vietnam the scooter is the restaurant guide.
Nobody walks to the good places. A rider picks you up, threads the evening traffic and parks at a plastic-stool kitchen you would never have found, then does it again five more times. Helmet supplied, appetite your problem.
What a day on two wheels actually costs.
Every ride on the site, grouped by price. A good number of the best ones cost less than the dinner you will want afterwards.
City loops, electric hours and the Vietnamese supper rides that cost less than a taxi across town.
Half-day Vespa runs, the Chianti circuit and the sidecar classics that come with a driver.
Private riders, full days in the hills and the photographer-led mornings that fill a phone.
Licence, helmet, pillion: what a scooter actually asks of you.
Two seats, two completely different bookings. Ride behind a guide and the day asks nothing but a helmet, and the helmet comes with the tour. Hire your own and the desk will usually want a licence, often an international permit alongside it, and a card for the deposit. Electric scooters sit between the two: a short lesson at the start, and rules that change from city to city.
Three rides that do not work in a coach.
Anywhere can put you on a bus with a microphone. A chair a foot off Roman cobbles, a kitchen reached through Saigon traffic and a gravel road between vines are the days a scooter buys you.
The chair beside the saddle
A driver rides, you sit in the sidecar with your head at wing-mirror height, and the city arrives at a speed that lets you look at it. The cars are period Vespas with the chair bolted on, which is why the fleets are small and each run takes two passengers at most. Morning runs get the cobbled lanes before the delivery vans; the evening ones get the fountains lit.
- 1Vespa Sidecar Tour By Night with Pickup★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,803 reviews
- 2Rome Morning Vespa Sidecar Tour in Rome with Cappuccino★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,771 reviews
- 3Highlights Vespa Sidecar Tour with Coffee and Gelato★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 747 reviews
Supper at six addresses
The rider knows which alley the bun cha comes from and parks the scooter half on the pavement while you eat. Between stops you are in the traffic rather than beside it, which is the part people talk about afterwards. Most runs finish near the river with something sweet and a coffee strong enough to undo the evening.
- 1Food Tour by Scooter with Eleven Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,502 reviews
- 2Saigon Evening Food Tour by Scooter★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 944 reviews
- 3Saigon Afternoon Unseen Street Food by Scooter |Opt: Ao Dai Rider★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 854 reviews
The gravel between the vines
Out of Florence the traffic thins inside twenty minutes and the road starts climbing between cypress and vine rows. Groups ride in convoy behind a guide, stop at a cellar or a farmhouse kitchen, and come back over the hills in the late light. The machines are small and the hills are real, so the pace is unhurried by design.
- 1Florence Vespa Tour: Tuscan Hills and Italian Cuisine★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 4,019 reviews
- 2Tuscan Countryside Vespa Tour with Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 701 reviews
- 3Tuscany Vespa Tour: Lunch & Wine Tasting, Countryside Roads★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 614 reviews
A rental is priced by the machine, not the head.
Hire desks quote for the scooter, and nearly all of them seat two. That is why a day out in Rome or along the Amalfi coast can work out cheaper for a pair than any guided ride on this site. Twenty-four hours is the usual unit, helmets come with it, and the deposit comes back when the machine does.
- 1MonsteRoller E-Scooter Rental in Budapestfrom $31 a head
- 2Hawaiian Style Moped Rental for the Day$43 per scooter (seats 1)
- 3Vespa Rental in Rome 24 hours$78 per scooter (seats 2)
By city, from Rome to Saigon
Six cities where the scooter is the point, not the transport.
Florence
Hanoi
Ho Chi Minh CityThe newest scooter ride reviews.
The rest of this week’s rides →
Electric Scooter Tour: Full Tour (Old Town + Ostrów Tumski)
Read our review →
Visit Hossegor on an all-terrain electric scooter – with a guide
Read our review →
Food tour & Vespa tour & Photo tour! All included
Read our review →
Vespa scooter tour in Rome with Pro-Photographer
Read our review →
