Actually, most of this trip was around Europe, and it mirrored much of the trip I took in March with my iPhone and rented SIM from iPhoneTrip.com.
Besides going into Africa and the Canary Islands / Madeira, there were a couple of differences between this trip and my Europera 2010 Tour. One difference is that I traveled this time with my girlfriend who decided not to rent a SIM from iPhonTrip.com (she came to regret this). By having her tour with just her AT&T SIM, we were able to see the differences very clearly.
Another difference was that we both had iPads with us along with the iPhones. As before, I also had my MacBook Pro. I was able to tether my iPad and my MacBook Pro to my iPhone using the rented SIM from iPhoneTrip.com, and a few times also let my girlfriend tether her iPad and iPhone to help save costs.
Additionally this trip was different in that we traveled by boat, car, and ship in addition to taking the train like the last trip. Here’s the map of our trip:
You can see, we traveled to London, Paris, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Venice, Rome, Florence, Pisa, Genova, San Remo, Monaco, Nice, Cannes, St. Tropez, Marsaille, Arles, Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid, Gibraltar, Tangiers, Seville, Lisbon Cádiz, Seville, Casablanca, Agadir, Gran Canaria, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Madeira, and Frankfurt.
This trip, there were only two times that I could not connect with my iPhoneTrip.com SIM:
1) The Chunnel (under water tunnel between England and France).
2) While SCUBA diving a ship wreck in the Canary Island.
So ya, other than not working under water 😉 I was always able to get a connection, more often than not, a much better connection than WiFi at the hotels.
I could connect in every other country. The data rates were all incredibly fast. In the end, I used multiple Gigabytes of data, and it cost me thousands of dollars less than what my girlfriend spent using international roaming via AT&T.
While the money savings was great, and significant, the connectivity was what I really cared about. I can’t make trips like this unless I can connect at all times and work on the go. Whether it was compiling a report in Rome, or having a conference call as I crossed the Straight of Gibraltar, I was able to work along the way without having to pause my trip so I could run back to a hotel and work.
I mentioned the driving aspect of this being different. The issue here is that connectivity while driving across foreign countries is extremely helpful for navigation as well as translating foreign signs and finding good places to stop to eat.
One thing that’s really fun when using the iPhoneTrip.com SIM is that “it just works”. You can look at your iPhone and watch the carrier logo just automatically switch over.
This was another magnificent trip that I couldn’t imagine what it would’ve been like without my iPhone along with the rented SIM from iPhonTrip.com.
If you’d like to see the photos from my iPhoneTrip check out my photo albums on Facebook.
