Even when our apartment didn’t have Wi-Fi, we stayed connected and within budget
Easy choice: Airalo Italy 30-day / 10 GB eSIM
Need to top it up like we did?
The Italy eSIM Top-up 30-day, 3 GB isn’t available anymore, but the Airalo Italy eSIM 30-day 5 GB is a great option. Here’s what we used:
Our Italy eSIM
Airalo Italy 30-day / 10 GB eSIM
Price at time of purchase
$19 USD (subject to change)
Our family has relied on this eSIM provider since 2022
Also compare
Ah, Italy. Where you always need to check restaurant reviews, navigate streets that have known traffic for thousands of years, and check the train schedule. With coasts, mountains, and labyrinthine cities, your choice of Italy eSIM needs to keep you connected regardless of narrow streets and buildings made of thick stone.
Our family’s visit to Italy began with a ferry from Morocco. Even as we arrived at a port in the northwest coastal city of Genoa, Jodie’s and my Italy eSIMs activated on the local network. Within minutes, our phones had connected, and we were online.
By the time we were winding our way through a quick immigration check and toward a taxi stand, we could confirm our address, check for any messages from our vacation rental host, and get ready for two delicious weeks in Genoa.
Beyond Genoa, a stay in Bologna came not only with a delight of food, but an unwelcome surprise: When our vacation rental turned out not to have Wi-Fi, our week’s stay meant we had to rely on our phone’s data connection to be online.
Easy connections from the coast to the hills, in the cities and in between
While in Genoa, we took a funicular up the hill to various overlooks with panoramic views over the sea, the city, and the inland valleys. We wandered through a maritime museum, art museums, a few restaurants, grocery stores, and pretty much any bakery we set eyes on.
Our Italy eSIM needed to be reliable. Walking through narrow streets along steep hills, we usually used Google Maps to navigate the city.
Beyond Genoa, we stayed for another week in Bologna, in Italy’s culinary heart, the Emilia-Romagna region. Our wanderings there had us at the very outskirts of town, where a long bus ride took us to a gelato class. We needed our phones online to check bus schedules for the return trip.
Throughout our stay in Genoa, the train ride between Genoa and Bologna, and our stay in Bologna, our Italy eSIM kept us connected, with no problems. That turned out to be even more necessary in Bologna: our apartment turned out not to have Wi-Fi. When in our apartment, we instead had to use our phones as hotspots. Not the most convenient, but we could get online when we needed to and take care of what we needed to do before heading out and about in Bologna.
Top-up to the rescue in Bologna
Our Airalo Italy eSIM really proved itself on this trip.
The country-specific eSIMs Airalo offers connect to local networks throughout the country. When we left Genoa on a train for Bologna, we didn’t have to worry about roaming or losing connection. Our phones stayed online seamlessly. When we arrived in Bologna, we could then easily use Google Maps to figure out the local buses to the neighborhood where we were staying.
Another perk of this eSIM? We had already picked and activated our Italy eSIM, but at the time we didn’t know our Bologna rental wouldn’t have Wi-Fi. We’d have some downtime at our rental during the stay. Since we’d have to use our phones at hotspots, we’d need to use more data than usual.
In our experience, a 30-day, 5 GB eSIM suffices for our data needs. However, we had opted for a 30-day 10 GB Italy eSIM, as we expected to need more data. Even with the larger eSIM, now that we’d need to use more data in Italy, though, we were going to run out of data.
Fortunately, our Italy eSIM had a top-up feature.
If we needed more data, we didn’t have to buy another eSIM—which would also mean going through the installation and activation processes again. Nope. Instead, we could get a top-up package. For a low price, we could add more data to our current Italy eSIM and continue doing what we needed to do, with no interruption or loss of connection.
Italy visit log
To summarize, in Italy we needed not just an eSIM, but a top-up:
- Airalo Italy 30-day 10 GB eSIM
- Airalo Italy eSIM Top-up 30-day 3 GB (no longer available, but you could get a 30-day 5 GB instead)
And we visited these destinations for our first family trip to Italy:
- Genoa for 2 weeks
- Bologna for 1 week
- Took a ferry from Morocco to Italy, and our phones were online by the time we docked
- Flew from Bologna back to the USA and had good data—even when we had to make an emergency taxi call at 4 a.m. to get to the airport.
- Topped up our Italy eSIM with additional data, when our Wi-Fi-less stay meant we needed to use more mobile data than usual
Practical tips
Review your Italy eSIM options for length of time, amount of data, and whether any top-up options are available. We rarely need to add data. When we needed more while in Bologna, though, it gave us peace of mind to know that we could easily add more to our current eSIM.
A good Italy eSIM operates in the background, so you can focus on enjoying la dolce vita
Our phones make it easier for us to do so much when we travel. From navigating to checking reviews, we can get around so much easier because of the utility our phones give us. When we’re in Italy, we want to head to all the tasty places, with a bit of culture and history thrown in.
Not having to worry about our mobile data—especially when our accommodation wound up not having Wi-Fi—meant we could focus on what we were in Italy for: more pasta, more culture, more time together as a family. And our Italy eSIM hummed along in the background, keeping us connected, there every time we needed it.
Our Italy eSIM
Airalo Italy 30-day / 10 GB eSIM
More on international eSIMs
Save data, handle battery drain, and other tips: How to use an eSIM for international travel
