Holiday Gift Guide – Bicycle Tours!

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If you are looking for a holiday gift for a friend or family member who likes to ride bicycles, check out our gift ideas!

Day tours.  Treat your gift recipient to a wonderful day out on a bike, where everything is taken care of, and they can just enjoy the ride. To do this, book any date on the calendar for your recipient (and include any extras you think they may want, such as a rental bike, lunch, GPS, etc.).  Then email Lukas (the owner) at lukas@gothambiketours.com with “GIFT” in the subject line and let him know which date you booked, and who it is for.  Lukas will then prepare a personalized gift certificate for your recipient and email it back to you.

When your recipient is ready to redeem the bike tour, they can either go on the date you selected, or they can contact Lukas and change the date to another.  These day tours are small groups (always less than 10 people) so it’s not difficult for us to change the dates for holiday gift recipients.

Gift cards. If you are not sure what tour is right for your recipient, you can also purchase a gift card worth a certain cash value.  Typically a gift card of $150 will pay for a Day Tour.  Or they could also apply the value of a gift card to a self-guided tour package or our October Vacation Tour.

Give a Gift Card

Trip plans and self-guided tours.  Give your cyclist a customized multi-day bike tour experience where all of the details are worked out. Contact Lukas directly if you are interested in this: 917-748-1119 or lukas@gothambiketours.com

Empire State Trail Bike Rentals

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Rental bike on Empire State TrailIf you are flying into New York from another state or country to ride the Empire State Trail, a rental bike is a convenient option for your tour. However, the rental bike you choose for the ride will be an important decision.

The important factors to consider are trail and road conditions and if the bikes you want to rent are set up for overnight touring.  You will also need to think about if the bikes are well maintained and convenient to pick up on your way to your tour. The rental bikes offered by Gotham Bicycle Tours are specifically set up for this.

  • Trail conditions – The Empire State Trail is not a continuous trail maintained by one organization.  It is an amalgam of existing trails, with different trail surface types, that were stitched together. Some segments are paved. Some are not.  Some are segments are well maintained. Some (especially New York City) are battered and bumpy.  This is why we offer  Marin Fairfax 2 hybrid-style bikes.  They are strong, comfortable bikes that take on all conditions. (For information about what the trail is like, click here)
  • Overnight touring – Ideally, your rental bike should be set up for touring. You will at least want a rack above the rear wheel to attach bags to so you can carry some or all of your stuff. You will want tools and a repair kit in case you have a breakdown. You will want tires reinforced against punctures. You will want a helmet, lock and an opportunity to change out the pedals if you bring your own pedals.  Just going with the cheapest bike you find online will not meet these requirements. However, the bikes from Gotham Bicycle Tours have all of this. They are set up and accessorized specifically for overnight tours on the Empire State Trail.
  • Maintenance – Most other rental bike shops in New York have huge fleets of bikes intended for hourly or daily rentals, where the bikes are used constantly and are serviced by staff periodically. Gotham Bicycle Tours is the opposite. We only have a small fleet of bikes that are serviced after every ride. We understand where you are about to go with the bike and we make sure its ready for several days of riding.
  • Convenience – Our rental bikes are stored in Woodlawn Heights, which is northernmost neighborhood inside New York City, near the Empire State Trail. This means you can come pick up the bikes from us and get directly on the trail at the City line (if you want to skip riding in NYC).  It is also easy to take the bikes back down to Manhattan using a bike-friendly train (25 minutes back to Grand Central), or you can just ride them back to Manhattan (takes about 60-90 minutes), or we can deliver them to you for an extra fee.  If you have flown into NYC but you want to take the train to Albany or Buffalo so you can ride back, we can meet you at the train station with the bike and help you get on the train (which is complicated with a bike).  Nobody offers service like this, except us.  While you may pay us a little more for the bike or the delivery fee, you will save a lot of time and aggravation, which is worth a lot.

How to get your Empire State Trail rental bike from Gotham Bicycle Tours

To rent a bike for your Empire State Trail bike tour, visit our bike rental page where you can reserve your bike for the days you want. If a bike in your size is not available online, please contact us since our booking system is set up to be conservative with inventory to avoid double-bookings.

You may also want to contact us before you finalize your booking if you have questions, or if you want to set up a delivery or receive your bike at the train station. We can work this out by phone or email before you pay for the rental.

Because we focus on a small fleet of bikes that we mostly rent to long distance riders, we do not have regular store hours or a traditional storefront.  When you are ready to rent, we will pick a time to meet, whether we do this at our storage location in Woodlawn Heights, or if we deliver your bike to your hotel or a train station. You always get good service from us. We want you to have a good time here in New York.

Pricing: $85 per day.  After three days, the price defaults to the $250 weekly rate. 

Rental panniers are available for $100 per pair if you want to carry belongings with you while you ride. (You can also bring your own panniers and they will work with our bikes).

If you have excess baggage that you do not want to take on your ride, you can store this with us for free during the term of your rental. 

Rental bike in front of Manhattan hotel

We can bring you and/or the bike right to your hotel in Manhattan (or elsewhere).

Delivery fees

We are currently the only bike rental company that delivers bikes in NYC or the Lower Hudson Valley. This is a huge convenience for our clients, but we need to pay staff for the time involved with making the delivery.  The delivery (or pick up) pricing is as follows:

  • Local delivery – Bronx or Lower Westchester County – $75
  • Manhattan – $250
  • Queens or Brooklyn – $300
  • Northern Westchester or Putnam Counties – $200
  • Dutchess or Ulster Counties – $400
  • Capital Region – $600

The above numbers are all based on travel time.  Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn are all very expensive because the TRAFFIC IS SO BAD. However, we will try to make it worth your while.  For example, if you are ending your tour at Battery Park in Manhattan, we can come pick up the bikes from you and drive you to your hotel as part of the arrangement for no extra fee.  Then you can see for yourself how bad the traffic is.

Planning a Bike Tour on the Empire State Trail in 2025

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Confusing signs on the Empire State TrailYou already know that you want to go on an Empire State Trail Bike Tour in 2025. But there are many questions: 

  • Do you know where you want to ride and how many days?
  • Do you know where you want to start and end? How will you get there?
  • Do you want to use your own bike or rent a bike?
  • Do you know where you want to stay along your ride? Will there be services and good places to eat?
  • Are you familiar with all of the places you can visit while you ride? Are there particular attractions or experiences that you are interested in? Are there particular foods or local products you would like to try?
  • Would you like a reliable GPS program to help you navigate the route and provide you with information while you ride? (If you rely only on Google Maps and signs, you are going to miss a lot and end up on bad roads.)

If you are not at all familiar with New York, you should expect to spend about 30 to 50 hours planning out your tour so that you can be organized enough to satisfy the above questions.  If you have some familiarity with New York, perhaps it will take you a few hours less.  Our Tour Planning Services are intended to save you this work.

This impressive waterfall involves a short detour from the Empire State Trail. Most people miss it. Make sure you see it!

Tour Planning Services

Using our tour planning services is an up-front cost, where you have us put the logistics, accommodations, and GPS together for you. This service can be tailored to any budget. If you are looking to hold down costs, we can usually alert you to cost savings that are hard to know about without living here. Sometimes you can make back what you pay us in trip planning fees. 

Pricing:  $500 per segment (Hudson Valley, Erie Canal or Champlain Valley). 

$800 for two segments (such as Buffalo to NYC). 

There may be additional charges for more complicated tours that require extra hours of work to put together.   

Here’s what you get:

  • Selecting the best itinerary. Through phone and email consultation, we can go over options with you to create an itinerary that has the ideal mileage per day for your group. This would include a selection of lodging options in locations that best suit your group.
  • Getting there and away. We can give you customized options for getting to the start of your ride, and getting back from the end of your ride. This can include logistics for traveling with your own bikes, or for using rental bikes.
Bike lane on Manhattan Street

Biking in Manhattan is tough, but also fun. We can give you all the info to get the most out of your time in the Big Apple. We also give you updated information about all Manhattan trail closures (which are routine).

  • Overview maps. Each day of riding will come with a set of overview maps that describe the highlights of each day, as well as the location of services. Emergency medical facilities and bike shops are identified as well as restaurants, convenience stores, and other services that cyclists may need.  Click here to see a sample overview map
  • Turn-by-turn GPS navigation. Your entire ride would be programmed with GPS navigation through Ride With GPS. You can run the GPS by using a smartphone app or   by downloading it to a Garmin or other device. This GPS will route you directly to and from your accommodations each day, and will help you find restaurants, services, scenic viewpoints, historic sights and more as you ride. Click here to see a sample of the GPS mapping you would receive. 

    Sign at end of Erie Canal

    You will pass hundreds of these signs in New York. Are they all worth stopping to read? Our GPS reads you summaries while you ride and gives you pictures of each sign to read later.

  • Information, attractions and points of interest. Your overview maps and GPS navigation can be customized to include information about specific attractions, recommended places to eat, good places to take breaks, notable scenic or historical sites and more. The Ride With GPS smartphone app also includes a guide with photographs of every informational panel along your route so that you do not need to stop and read any. The GPS will read you one-sentence summaries about what each sign is about as you pass the sign, so you will know if you want to read it.