Cellular Abroad Travel Blog

Italy is my passion. Ever since I can remember, I have been giving impromptu tours to friends and friends of my family – and I am talking preteens! Having been born and raised in Italy, traveled extensively throughout “il bel paese” and now working in the travel industry has given me a unique perspective. I still enjoy giving people sound advice regarding how they can best benefit given their time frame to enjoy Italy. Mind you, I could write a series of book on the topic so here are just a few pointers that hopefully go beyond the obvious and what you will find in most guidebooks or websites for trip planning.

If this is your first time in Italy, you will most likely want to visit the main cities such as Rome, Florence and Venice and visit the main attractions such as the Vatican Museums in Rome, gli Uffizi in Florence and Piazza San Marco in Venice. I think that many people endure the lines mostly because they don’t want to endure people saying, “what, you went to Rome and you didn’t see the 16th Chapel?!?!”. I am not saying not to visit the standards, tip number one is to do it the smart way. Instead of standing in line forever, pay a little extra in order to get a VIP pass that will get you quick access. There are plenty of online sites that offer this service or you can use a concierge if you are staying at a 4-5 star hotel.

Tip number two involves one of my personal favorites and is usually the first thing that I do whenever I go to a city that I am not familiar with. Find the highest viewpoint (ex. the Duomo in Milano, the Gianicolo in Rome) in order to get an idea of the layout of the city. Besides the inevitable breathtaking view, you will be able to plan your itinerary.

Do a night tour as well as a day tour. It is amazing how different the experience is when seeing the monuments all lit up. It’s like, um, night and day! Italians are masters at lighting and creating impressive scenery. If you avoid the weekend crowds, you can even have a taxi drive you around for a 30-40 minute trip and it shouldn’t cost you more than 30-50 USD. I think that a night tour in Rome is particularly impressive. Check out St. Peters, the Colosseum, Trevi Fountain and the Roman Forum at night and I think you will agree.

Another favorite thing for me to do when I am in a new city is to find a good place to people watch. Find a nice outdoor cafe’ (weather permitting) and just hang out for a while, perhaps even catching up on writing postcards, letters,  or emails (emails with your mifi service from Cellular Abroad of course http://www.cellularabroad.com/italyRmifi.php). In Italy, unlike many places in the United States, they allow you to linger at a table as long as you want. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they will want you to camp out for a week but even a cup of coffee that takes a couple of hours to consume is not unheard of. Try to find a place that has a good crowd of people but is not strictly for tourists.

When it comes to dining, I always ask what the local specialty is. Even if you are in a town with a couple of thousand inhabitants, chances are they will recommend something local to them and either not available or prepared differently than the town down the road. Also, ask for the house wine if you want good bang for buck. The house wine is usually served in a carafe and is available in white or red.

A recent tip, that has personally occurred to me several times recently is to make sure that you have a good, non 800 number in case you need to reach customer service for important phone numbers – your travel agent, credit card, the airlines, etc. While many – not all – but many toll free numbers will work in Italy, even though they are not toll free, they may put you through the standard customer service number and it takes for ever to talk to a live rep. Furthermore, while many credit card companies have an international collect call number printed on the back of the credit card, they do not always work. Sometimes they are automated and the operator doesn’t understand what they are saying, sometimes companies only have a certain allotted amount of minutes they can use for accepting collect calls, and, as David Letterman would say, the number 1 issue is….do you know how to say, “I want to make a collect call” in Italian? It’s, “a carico del destinatario” by the way and 170 is the number of the operator.

That’s it for now but I plan on updating this page soon, so…arrivederci e a presto!

This year, I was fortunate enough to be able to take a longer vacation to Italy than usual. In fact, the entire trip lasted almost 2 months, 2 months of extensive and at times, travel throughout Italy. Some of the places I visited included Milano, Brescia, Bologna, Lecco, Reggio Emilia, Verona, Rome, Bari, Naples, The Amalfi Coast, parts of the Tuscan countryside, Sicily, and the island of Ponza, off the coast somewhere between Naples and Rome.

Ponza, while popular with Italians, is not frequented by many foreigners.  Although the town itself is quite attractive, the main attractions are the coasts and great food. Similar in many respects to Capri, the two stark differences are the lack of non Italian tourists and the savings compared to other islands.  Most of the Italians on Ponza are from Rome and Naples as Ponza is about as easily accessible from either city. In fact, the “Ponzesi” speak with an accent and dialect that is somewhere between the two. Of the 5-6 restaurants we tried we never had a bad meal.  The fish dishes and pastas were fantastic and if you order the house wine, you will not run up a large bill. The only comment regarding the restaurants that immediately comes to mind is that you should try not to stray from the menu and you should ask for a bill that outlines what you got. On several occasions, the waiters attempted to just jot down a number on a piece of paper.

The beaches on Ponza are gorgeous although one of the highlights was taking a speed boat to the nearby, semi-deserted island of Palmarola. There are very few houses on Palmarola and a couple of them are owned by the Fendi’s, who also rent out rooms dug out from the rocks.

If you are looking for sunshine, pristine waters, great food and affordable prices, Ponza may be a great alternative to Capri or some of the other Italian resort islands.

Last year on a vacation to Guatemala, I decided to travel with the National Geographic Travel Phone offered by Cellular Abroad. Was I glad to have it with me during my trip!! When I first arrived at the airport, the airplane arrived early and there was no one available to pick me up at the airport. I took out my cell phone and once the phone picked up a signal (Claro GSM) I was able to call my contact’s cell phone with no problem! She took me over to the hotel and soon enough, I had other issues that needed to be attended to by contacting people over the phone.

The hotel did not have my reservation, as well as a few other tourists due to computer problems at the hotel. Also, with the current storm they were experiencing, they were having technical issues throughout the Capital. I was able to contact my local travel agent in California to have them provide the reservation number and ensure that I had a place to stay during my travels. Other travelers weren’t as lucky! So, of course I recommended they travel with Cellular Abroad on their next trip! It was a great experience!

Many customers inquire about the cell phone reception and coverage they will receive while using one of our international cell phones abroad.  The short answer is that our phones will work wherever cell phones in your destination country work.  Using an international cell phone through us allows you to enjoy the same coverage as the locals.  The cell signal is based on your location relative to the cell phone towers.  If you are in an area where there is cell coverage, the city, a town, on the road you’re fine.  If you venture into an area where even the locals do not have coverage then your phone also will not support.

This begs the question, so how is the cell phone coverage in the country I’m going to?  Well if you are headed to Europe the cell coverage is as good as or better than the coverage in the States.  The only issue you may find is being in a really old hotel room, and then you may have to venture down to the lobby to get reception. Aside from that Europe is  saturated with cell phone coverage and has one of the most robust cell nets in the world. In developing nations the cell coverage is still good but is more limited to the populated areas and well traveled roads.

You can check and see the coverage where you are heading on our site.  We offer a link to a cell phone coverage map on every SIM card page.  If you know which cities you’re going to visit, you can zoom in on the maps and check the signal strength everywhere you’re planning to see.

If you’re still unsure, Cellular Abroad’s International Talk Abroad service works on multiple networks in each country… so if you’re worried about not getting full service with one operator, take the Talk Abroad SIM and Cellular Abroad has you covered almost everywhere that you can get a cellular signal!

In just the third week of February 2011 alone we have customers heading all over the globe with our rental phones.  Our call center reps have to be adept at recommending plans for travel destinations around the world.  Every minute we are speaking to another travel savvy customer who is heading abroad and needs a cell phone that will support internationally or wants to escape the roaming charges of their US carrier. 

We have customers taking advantage of our local cell services and getting local call rates in Australia, the Bahamas, Canada, the Caribbean, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, Spain, Thailand and the UK.  These are just the people headed to single destinations and doesn’t include all the travelers with satellite phone rentals or our global multi-country service. 

It’s fun to help people add that last and sometimes most important travel piece.  Not only are they saving money and getting the convenience of being able to confirm reservations and keep in touch back home, but most importantly they are gaining the security of traveling with a cell phone while overseas.  The days of hotel phones and calling cards at pay phones are over, the travel savvy are armed with local cell phones and have that added sense of safety for whatever situation may arise. 

We have dozens of customer letters hanging in the call center and several of them recant a similar rental car breakdown story and how glad there were to have cell phone while stuck out on a foreign road.  But these people should really thank themselves for being travel savvy enough to  have the tools that can help them out in an emergency.  As I was writing this we reserved services for Argentina and South Africa which means this week we will have savvy travelers out there on every continent!

We never hear from the majority of our customers.  They order online, receive their order confirmation, tracking number and international phone number via email, then their phone arrives at their door, and if they rented they send it back with the included return label when they get back from their trip.  Most of our services come activated with the initial call credit preloaded.  Some services require a quick online form be filled out prior to departure.  The printed out instructions tell you how to activate (if you need to), how to dial, how to check your voicemail, how to add more credit.  Who are these people?  Are they so tech and phone savvy that they don’t need any customer service interaction to find out what plan is the best for them and how it works?

For those customers who do call in and want a breakdown of their options here’s how a typical conversation with one our customer service reps goes…

Where are you traveling to?

We have two options for travelers, a multi-country service and a variety of single country services.  All our services are prepaid, so you pay for call credit as you go, there are no bills or contracts through us.  If you are heading to more than one country you can get a US and UK number on one phone that will work for you world wide.  This is ideal for traveling around Europe.  If you are just going to one country we can usually offer you a local number and rate plan in that country.  This option will give you the lowest per minute rates.

How long will you be gone? How often do you travel?

The length of your trip will determine whether it’s better to rent or purchase a phone.  Any trip over 6weeks and it’s cheaper to just buy the phone.  The benefits of buying are that you can use the phone again when you travel in the future.  All our phones are unlocked and can be used with any other SIM card you can acquire.  Also, we have free ground shipping so you don’t have to pay for round trip shipping as you would with a rental phone.

If purchasing is your best option:

All the prices you see include the SIM card, initial credit, international charger and adaptors and free ground shipping (if you’ve left yourself enough time).  Remember the service is always the same it just depends on what you want the phone to look like / be able to do.  The coverage and the reception will always be the same regardless of the model.  You can use your phone with any SIM card you can acquire.  Put in the global SIM and have coverage anywhere, switch out a SIM for Italy or China or anywhere and instantly have a local cell phone and service. 

If renting is your best option:

You will pay the fee for the rental period, the initial call credit voucher, and the roundtrip shipping, you could add more talk time at this time or as you travel.  The rental will arrive for you two business days prior to your set departure date.  The phone number will be emailed to you the day your rental ships and will also come labeled on the back of the phone.  Your package includes the international charger and adaptors and a return FedEx label so you can send the rental back.  The printed out instructions you receive will tell you how to activate the phone, if necessary, how to dial, how to be dialed, how to check your messages and how to add more call credit.

No matter which option is best for you, mulit-country, country specific, renting or buying our call center can answer any question you have or you can do it all online.  Either way we’ve got you covered.