Ipad 3

You should explore the Trip Advisor forums for those countries to get the advice of local experts. I understand that Italy has cheap data plans; I recall reading about TIM prepaid sims for phone and data. Lebara in France has cheap phone prepaid sims, but did not have data the last time I checked.

John, copy the following line into google and run a search: site:www.ricksteves.com/graffiti/helpline ipad italy france micro-sim This will brink up lots and lots of message threads about purchasing prepaid SIMs in Europe for use in an iPad or iPhone. In my experience, getting a prepaid SIM account from a European carrier is the best way to use data at rates that, while not cheap, won't bankrupt you. If you were from the U.S., I might suggest you check out AT&T's world traveler data rates, but only if you wanted to do very light web surfing and moderate email usage. But you're not in the U.S., so nevermind. The EU controls the rates that phone companies can charge and they just capped the rates on data for the first time a few days ago: "European lawmakers on Thursday approved a plan to extend and lower the Continent's limits on mobile phone roaming charges paid by consumers for another five years, and added the first controls on mobile Internet use." European Parliament Approves Lower Roaming Charges. Not 100 percent sure how I feel about too much government interference with the market (I'm no ideologue either way), but European socialism may work out well for visitors in this instance. I don't have an iPad (but do have Android devices, including a tablet). I have successfully used a prepaid data plan from T-Mobile U.K. to access the Internet while in various European countries. It was so convenient that I stopped trying to connect through wifi other than at my hotel. Not worth the trouble.