Bicycle window shopping

For those of you that haven't yet heard, I think it's time to announce it officially: next week, I plan to travel down to Sicily, and to go around the entire island on a bicycle! However, I have no bike here in Italy at the moment — so to prepare for the Great Sicilian Ride, I need to do some shopping. Today, for my first rainy day in Rome, I began window shopping around, and looking at what's on offer. I'm hoping to find something second-hand, nice and cheap, but good and durable enough to last me for my journey. And it seems that Rome is a promising place, if it's a decent second-hand bike that you're after.

My first stop was a little place called "Bartolomei", which is basically a workshop where a group of mechanics custom-build bicycles on-the-spot, for their niche clientele. This may not sound like such an ideal spot for what I have in mind: but I read somewhere on the net that they sometimes have some second-hand bikese for sale; so I went and had a squiz. Turns out that their second-hand range is pretty limited: they only have 2 such bikes available at the moment; neither of them look to be in great condition, and they want €50 apiece for them. I'll probably give Bartolomei a miss.

After that, I went down to Porto Portese, which is a market area famous for being "the place in Rome where you can find anything cheap". And it looks like I need to go no further: because Porto Portese is chockers full of dudes selling second-hand bikes, and most of them don't look too bad! You can also get them for as low as €50 down here, which is roughly what I'm looking to spend. Anyway, I didn't buy anything today — but I had a good look around; and I think that this is where I'll be making my purchase, when I buy the bike that will take me around Sicily.