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Finding Our Way Around

What's the best way to navigate around Italy? When traveling to new cities in the US, I always use the public transportation option on Google Maps since it tells me upcoming bus/train times, or the best walking routes. Is this a must in Italy too? We should have wifi at our hotels, but I'm not sure if it's as available in public places such as businesses or restaurants and I want to be able to find my way around without preplanning every destination beforehand. Assuming we won't be able to get sufficient wifi everywhere, what's the best/cheapest way to get a 10-day data plan or SIM card for my iPhone? (I don't need a phone plan since I have free international calling via Skype.) Thank you!

Posted by
15679 posts

Call us dinosaurs but good old paper maps still work perfectly well for us. For getting around the country, we use the schedules posted at the train stations or on the Trentialia website - which we can pull up on our ipad at the hotel. Cities are easy: the main attractions in most of them are in a fairly compact area so we've rarely ever needed public transport; just a couple of metro hops in Rome over several trips.

I get a map before we go and mark the mark the attractions on our wish list with little stickers. Best walking routes? Half the fun is just finding our wayโ€ฆand getting a little lost sometimes!

We don't travel with phones at all as we don't want to mess with them and frankly have yet to have needed them.

Posted by
4138 posts

My new fave is Rome2rio.com. You can put in your addresses and get an idea of where you are going and how long it will take on foot, by public transportation or by taxi. There are also estimates of costs.

Many places besides your lodgings will have Wi-Fi. Unless you can get some screaming data deal, don't spend your money on that. You can run up enormous bills really fast.

I'm a big picture person. For larger cities like Rome, Venice, Milan, Naples and Florence, I love the laminated Streetwise maps, available here online and in some bookstores or at some AAAs. They fold up to legal envelope size. They include street, tourist sight, metro and other useful indexes as well as show them on the map in excellent detail.

Posted by
11613 posts

I am a fan of Streetwise maps, too. You can mark routes and then erase them. The free hotel map is usually good enough to find the main sights.

Posted by
2431 posts

Another fan of paper maps here - before my trip to Italy, I went to my local Barnes & Noble and bought maps of Venice and Florence, published by Borch(R). They're excellent and comprehensive. Having and studying them well in advance helped me discover sights to see that I would probably have missed otherwise.

Posted by
8377 posts

Most hotels have a stack of paper maps highlighting the major sites and streets at the front desk. We found these to be adequate for getting around town.

Posted by
2252 posts

I, too use the hotel's paper maps. I ask whoever is behind the desk to please mark the hotel's location on it so I can find my way "home".

Posted by
11613 posts

Speaking of finding your way "home", I always have the hotel's business card with me.

Posted by
94 posts

there's an app I use called "Find my car" that you can turn on when you reach your hotel, and then wherever you are you can get gps directions to get back

Posted by
11294 posts

Everyone above is correct - you don't "need" Google Maps on your phone to get around Italian cities. But if you've become used to it in the US, you may miss it there. If you want to have access to this while out on the street, you will need a data plan. The "best" or "easiest" or "cheapest" way (three different things) will depend on your US carrier. If you post this information, we can give you better guidance.

Posted by
1825 posts

There are many city downloadable map apps that won't require a data connection to use. If you get your phone unlocked before you go you can pick up a sim with data and there are a few threads on the topic in the tech forum here.
As much as I love my phone and Google I still rely on paper maps in the big cities. I carry a small compass so I know which way to hold the map. You will see many people on street corners flipping their maps up and down trying to get an orientation.

Posted by
19654 posts

I noticed on my last trip to Venice, that you no longer see a lot of people staring at their dog-eared maps. Now, they stare down at their smart phones, but still trying to figure out which way is north.

Posted by
15679 posts

What's nice about conventional maps?

They don't require data plans or have to be 'unlocked'
Never have to be recharged
You can easily see a large area all at once
If you drop one, they don't break
You can write/use a highlighter on them
If you lose one, they're cheap and easy to replace
If you lose one, you've ONLY lost your map

And lastly? The light fingers in the Metro/bus/train station/museum/cafe are FAR more interested in the guy with the Smartphone sticking out of his pocket than my worthless scrap of paper! :O)

Posted by
4730 posts

Technology is great WHEN it works. The only time I've ever been lost in Europe was when we relied on someone in the group that used a GPS device. Has NEVER happened with a paper map.

Posted by
7737 posts

I'm in Ravenna right now and let me echo what TC just wrote. When I got off the train in Ravenna I decided to be cutting-edge with my technology and use my droid phone with T-Mobile unlimited data, using Google Maps and the GPS to give me directions to my B&B. I ended up going in circles repeatedly, hauling my heavy bags around over cobblestones until I finally found my B&B. If I had just looked at a map when I was at the train station, I would have been fine. Lesson learned. The GPS works great to tell me where I am at any given time, but it really is lousy at giving realtime directions.

Posted by
1825 posts

Michael, You may want to turn your WiFi on when using the GPS for walking around cities....it increases the accuracy.

Posted by
396 posts

With Google maps you can save a map(s) 'offline' to your phone so that you're not using your phone's data plan to navigate. The GPS on the smart phone doesn't make use of the data plan. We used the Google map app & downloaded maps last summer on a trip to France and found it more accurate than our newish Garmin with brand-new maps of Europe, doing a simultaneous test several times on the trip. In our experience, several times Google maps bailed us out of something less efficient or just wrong that the Garmin was suggesting that we do. Here is a link describing 'save a map offline':
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2911602/8-great-google-maps-tips-for-android-and-ios.html
I agree with everyone else that having a paper map as a backup is worth the peace of mind.

Posted by
3696 posts

Maps With Me is also an app that you can save your maps and use offline.
I still like a little paper map that I can fold up in my pocket when walking around, but when I am
driving I now use my GPS. Sometimes forget to have a paper map as backup... not smart!

Posted by
524 posts

Question about the Streetwise maps. I have rome and Venice. I like that they are accordion styel, I like that they are laminated. But I don't like how small the print is. I truly cannot read it with my contacts on. I guess I'll have to buy some readers, I've never done that before. Is that how you all can read these things. I could read them with my trifocals, but I'm not wearing those around for the day.