|
If I'm traveling through small towns in Northern Italy, can I expect to find wireless connections readily available? Or at least connections at PC cafes to which I can hook up my laptop? The Lonely Planet guide suggests wireless connections are generally harder to come by than in the US. I was planning on mapping out GPS routes nightly on bikely.com so if that's true it looks like I'm going to need to rely on maps.
|
#
¿
Aug 21, 2010 22:29
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 6, 2024 00:55 |
|
|
schoenfelder posted:I've also never seen the possibility to hook up your own laptop in an internet café. ok thanks this is useful to know. I assume it is permitted to download files onto a USB stick at an internet cafe, which should be good enough. unrelated question: I'm wondering if anyone has been to a cheap but half decent hotel in Venice? from the reviews I've read the low-end hostel-type places are relatively interchangeable, but you want to pick one that doesn't involve an extra trip on the water bus.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 22, 2010 20:17
|
|
|
I'm hoping for some advice on getting a SIM card in Europe primarily for GPS use for biking over a couple weeks. I'm planning on buying a GSM sim card on arrival at the airport, which I understand is easy enough. I don't plan to make many calls, but I want to be sure I have a reliable data connection with enough bandwidth/data to use GPS for 5-6 hours a day. Is there some particular provider that would be optimal for this (ie good coverage in Germany and France, and not too expensive)? I'll be biking ~7 days total during my trip, so I'm also wondering how much data I should buy. (I guess I can top it up if I run low, hopefully that's easy to do via the phone itself.) Also I'm wondering if I can expect decent coverage in the French Alps. I have a Tmobile prepaid phone in the US. I hear Tmobile offers some sort of service to its US customers in Europe if they have a postpaid plan but it appears I do not have access to this.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2014 04:14
|
|
|
greazeball posted:GPS doesn't use data, you can use it in flight mode if you want to test it. If you have your maps offline (Maps With Me/MAPS.ME was what we used when Google maps offline was giving us poo poo, and it was ok), the only thing you'll be missing is the directions feature. If you're a good navigator you should be able to manage. Battery life could be an issue, do you have some kind of solar charger or spare batteries? The turn by turn navigation is really nice when biking, since it allows one to remain focused on the road and not have to stop and fiddle with the phone. Offline maps would certainly be workable, but I wish there were some way I could just buy a SIM with 5GB of data for $30 like I do with Tmobile prepay. From what I understand it will be necessary to buy separate SIM cards in Germany and France, and the data is considerably more expensive. I'm bringing one of those Anchor supplementary batteries so hopefully that will be sufficient.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2014 16:41
|
|
|
chocolateTHUNDER posted:How ubiquitous is wifi in Europe? Are there free wifi spots everywhere like in North America, or is it more limited? If she happens to use a Tmobile postpaid plan in the US, the plan's data allotment is transferable to Europe with no roaming fee.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2014 16:33
|
|
|
This is a longshot, but can anyone advise on finding a road bike to use for one week in Grenoble? I would like to bike around Grenoble for seven days starting August 2nd (to do Alpe d'Huez etc.). I won't be able to bring a bike with me, so I'm hoping to find one. There are a few bike shops there but so far one (Happy Bike) has nothing available for that time period, and so far I haven't been able to reach the other two (Dayak and Metrovelo don't respond to email, phone just rings). I found a couple more shops in Le Bourg d'Oisans but that's a ways a way from Grenoble. If I can't rent I'll might do a hail mary, buy something used on ebay and have it delivered to my hotel. I'd rather not though.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2014 22:41
|
|
|
HookShot posted:When you say road bike, do you mean a professional type? Because Metrovelo have stands with bikes to rent at the train station, for like 0.10 an hour, you could do that every day. But none of their bikes (at the gare or in store) look like real road bikes, they're more cruisers. Yes I mean a racing-style rather than the city cruisers Metrovelo offers. You're correct I called Dayak today not realizing they're closed on Monday, although I emailed them last week and never heard back. I looked through the links on that page you posted, the only place that rents bikes seems to charge quite a stiff price, 550 euros for one week (including 150 euro delivery fee). Happy Bike was charging 180 euros for a bike that would have worked fine (but they're sold out).
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2014 04:14
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 6, 2024 00:55 |
|
|
greazeball posted:Are you flying directly to Grenoble? Might be worth checking wherever you're landing too. In Geneva there's http://www.bikeswitzerlandrentals.com who have good bikes. They rent GPS devices too. They were offering this model, which would have been fine for my purposes. They were also offering some Cervelos for roughly what the other place wanted for much less ritzy bikes. I'll actually be flying into Paris (Orly airport) from Berlin and taking the train to Grenoble. As long as I can take a bike on the train to Grenoble, renting one in Paris wouldn't actually a bad backup plan, but it would mean staying in Paris overnight to pick up the bike, which will make the actual bike tour rather more hectic, since I'll have no margin for error if I want to make my flight back to the US.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2014 16:23
|
|