While we’re in France, we’ve being using a smart phone app called MapsWithMe. There’s a free version and one that costs around $5 which we use. It’s really good: first, you download the maps of your required countries or regions before you depart. Then, you can access them WITHOUT having global roaming on – ie no access costs. It’s great to use when wandering around cities, and we’ve found it useful sometimes when our Sat Nav isn’t giving us the information we need.

We purchased the TravelSIM card to save on mobile calls and texts while travelling in Europe.  Todate our experience has been variable. Issues we’ve encountered have been poor service quality and very delayed (sometimes by 12 hours) text messages. As a further update to this, we found that we could not receive calls in France if we were connected via the Orange network – so we had to manually manage our carrier selection to avoid Orange.  Given we were having a rental car crisis at the time, this was most inconvenient.

We’ve been using a free app on our smartphone,  called Viber, to call and text for free from overseas.  While the quality can be variable, we’ve been able to communicate successfully. The only catch is you need to have WiFi access for it to work – but these days hotels, cafes, etc often have free WiFi.   For more tips and tricks into making the most of your French trip – click here at our Insights page.