I might be available to house sit, Peter! Bert4545 has my email address, get it from him, and we can discuss it. I'll be house sitting in Preston in February, so you and your wife can look me over. Cheers.

Yvonne

I’m re-reading Morris, and perusing Bert4545’s threads on Fodors in preparation. Along with “We visited Venice and we saw..” from your good self.>>

i think I'd be paying a mite more attention to Morris than me, but it's nice to be remembered. do you ever find yourself reading your own excellent threads and realising you'd forgotten something?

7 weeks in Venice - again! and we get some people asking whether 3 days is too long.

regards, ann

ttt

The solution - TIM mobile. Cost 49 euro for a USB key, plus 10 euro for 100 hours or a month, which ever comes first.
Yvonne, we'll loan you the key for your next trip.

That's very kind and gracious of you, Pietro. Thank you! And, the rate for internet use is quite reasonable, isn't it?

Last year we lucked out and found the "TRE" store in FCO airport (Rome). They had an incredible price for a micro SIM card for our IPAD - like 8Euro for a month of useage. We had internet all over Italy, including on trains.

Would suspect they are competitive for other telephone/computer/gadget items.

Steve

bocacpa - think that Brad might have topped this to advertise his business as this is his one and only contribution to the wonderful world of fodors.

[I've reported him so no-one else has to]

Bocacpa, let me be clear on this. I am planning a 3 week trip to France and Italy. I can take a laptop or my iPad. From what I read here, I can purchase a SIM card for iPad and have Internet access, is that correct? Does the iPad have to be jail broken? Where do I insert the SIMS card? Thanks for any help!

If your iPad has AT&T 3G, you can replace the mini-sim card with one purchased at TIM (or a similar provider in France). If it has Verizon 3G service, you can't do it. I researched that before I bought my iPad2, just to make sure I'd be able to use it. While wifi was pretty easy to find, we found that the 3G service was necessary (and even it dropped out once in a while) as we drove all over Umbria and Tuscany to Cinque Terre and then through Parma to Lake Como after spending a week in Rome. (we were there a month and for 39Euro got appropriate sims for both the iPad and my old standby jailbroken Motorola phone. )

The clerk at the TIM store in Rome installed it for me and helped me sign on, etc. Having watched him do it, I was able to reinstall my stateside card w/o any problems.

Thank you, uh oh-busted. We have an iPad 2 without 3G, but Santa gave me a gift card to buy one for me. I will get the 3G for AT&T. You did not mention if yours was jail broken.

I used an IPad 1 without 3G easily. We stayed in apartments that had a wifi service, and it was no different from at home. Wifi has really exploded in the last year or so. We did not do well in the Marriot near FCO, as the wifi was erratic and we had to wander around the main floor looking for places where it worked.