René Seindal

I have understood from a previous post that Wendy travels without a mobile phone, and hence have limited internet access. Here is how you get a mobile phone with internet access in Italy.

There are three mobile phone operators in Italy: TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile), Wind and Vodafone.

TIM has a red/blue logo, Wind is orange and Vodafone is red/white. They have affiliated shops all over, also in smaller towns. It should be easy to find a shop for one of them.

In the shop (there will likely be at least one person who speaks English or French) ask for a cheap mobile phone (telefonino economico) with a prepaid contract (prepagato) and internet access (accesso internet).

Un telefonino economico, prepagato con accesso internet.

Internet access can be with GPRS, EDGE or UTMS. The phone must have support for Bluetooth, but I guess all have by now.

They will ask for a document of identity, for example a passport. In some cases they will also ask for an address, where I have just given the address of a friend. They won’t send anything to the address anyway.

I don’t know how much the phone itself will cost, since I had an unlocked GSM phone with me to Italy, but phones aren’t that expensive anymore. My guess is that it should be possible to find a usable phone for €100.

The prepaid account costs €10 of which €5 are for talking.

Activating a new SIM card can sometimes take a while, so be prepared to wait for a couple of hours at this point, until the phone gets a signal when turned on. When the phone is connected, return to the shop.

Internet access requires a configuration on the phone to work. The people in the shop will do that if asked. It only takes a minute or two.

Mi serve la configurazione per l’accesso al Internet, per favore.

At this point the phone should be ready to go.

Internet access with the mobile network can be expensive in Italy, but there is a plethora of ever changing discounts, offers, incentives and so on. It should be possible to get a “100MB for €20″ deal or something similar. It depends on the operator.

The Nokia Nseries N800 Internet Tablet

For use with the Nokia Nseries N800 Internet Tablet a few steps are needed to get the tablet on the Internet through the phone.

As I have managed to fry the charging circuits on my own Internet Tablet, I cannot check the correctness of the description below. It is written from memory, so please excuse me if there are inaccuracies.

On the tablet, open the Connection Manager. It is in the “Applications” menu (third from the top on the left) select “Tools” and “Connection Manager”.

In the menu of the Connection Manager (menu at the top of the display) select “Phones” and a new window should appear. Click the “New” button and let the tablet find the phone. Don’t forget to enable Bluetooth on the phone first, or it won’t be found. Once the phone is found, select it and follow the instructions to connect the two devices. It will involve entering a numeric code on one device and then the same code on the other device. Its a one time thing so I haven’t done it all that often.

Once the phone and the tablet are connected (or paired as it is called), an internet connection can be set up through the phone.

Still in the Connection Manager, select “Connections” from the menu (it might be on a sub-menu, I’m not sure) and click “New”. Follow the instructions. The tablet should ask a series of questions about the connection, the phone and the operator. The connection is a “Packet data” connection, and it should be associated with the phone. The tablet will then ask about country, operator and such. When that is done, the tablet should be able to access the internet using the mobile phone.

That should (hopefully if my memory has served me well) suffice to get back in Beach Blogging mode.

The Nokia Nseries N800 Internet Tablet isn’t a very common device yet, so it is unlikely the local mobile phone shop will be able to help with the setup, but it doesn’t hurt asking.

Today’s paddle became rather special, for a number of reasons.

I started in the afternoon after a morning’s hard work at the internet café. Their coffee is appallingly good, but paddling need to be done.

First thing, I encountered the first paddler ever in the lagoon, except of course Marco who always complains that nobody else paddles in Venice. Apparently he’s wrong. Somebody has been rummaging in the old shed to find grandpa’s old kayak and paddle. Nice guy, though, and he enjoyed his paddle just as much as I did.

The plan was to paddle to Torcello, and on the way I got entangled in a maze of little channels in the lagoon, from where I got my first close view of Torcello.

Lo and behold, there was another paddler! The lagoon was positively swarming with paddlers today. Another grandpa boat, obviously, but he had good fun too. Its not what you have, its what you do with it that matters.

Finally I arrived at Torcello, unfortunately too late to enter and see the church inside. That’ll be another time.

The island of Torcello also has it’s little pretty corners.

Passing Burano on my way back, it once again surprised me with its multitude of colours. Every house is different, every corner turned is a new experience.

Yet another little display of vivid colour at Burano. This corner is near the main square of the village.

On my way back, as I’m starting to hurry not to be caught by darkness, I paddled into the most astonishing sunset. The low sun over the placid waters in the lagoon was spectacular.

Another sunset shot, taken on the east coast of the island of Sant’Erasmo.

I managed to get back to the Lido just after sunset so I didn’t have to cross the busy entrance of the lagoon in darkness.

Most embarrassingly, when I returned to the bridge in front of the camping, I slipped on the steps and fell in the water, just in front of a local fisherman. He helped me up and asked politely if it was the first time I fell in the water that day

On our way down to Italy we passed by Varese near Milan to visit Nicola de Florio of Avatak Pagaie. Nicola had promised Wendy and me an Avatak paddle each for our journey, and he has kept his promise twice over.

Our agreement was for a Greenland style paddle each, a take apart paddle for Wendy and a single piece paddle for me. When I arrived to pick up our paddles, there were two paddles for each of us: a Greenland model as agreed, and a two piece Aleutina model.

The Aleutina is rather special. It is unshouldered, the widest point of the blade is some 15 cm from the tip, and then it has a kind of spine on one side of the blade, It is in effect one side of the shaft that continues down the blade.

As I understood Nicola’s explanation, the two sides are like two different gears. The flat side is normal and the side with the spine a higher gear.

I’ve never padded with such a thing before but I have used it a bit here in Venice and the is a clear difference between using the two sides, but as I was guiding a group in the lagoon I wasn’t free to experiment.

I’m really looking forward to playing more with these paddles once I get to Sardinia.

It can be a bit difficult shooting pictures when you’re sitting in your kayak, especially if there’s a bit of action around you, and it can be impractical having the camera dangling around your wrist when paddling or manoeuvring.

Fortunately, there are other ways to attach a camera on a kayak.

I have found some cheap suction cup camera mounts at actioncameras.co.uk and it works quite well. It can handle a weight of up to 3 kg, so the 155 g of my camera is no problem.

At times it can be difficult to get the suction cup to stick to the kayak. Most of the surface of the kayak is curved, and plastic kayaks often have a slightly rough surface which gives the suction cup a weaker grip, but once it is correct attached it can take quite a deal.

I have used mine in both wind and waves and it almost always stays put. Actually, it seems to stick better if it gets a bit of water every once in a while, but unfortunately the waves have a tendency to leave droplets on the lens.

Needless to say, always attach both camera and mount with strings or wires to the kayak. They can break lose and they can also come apart. I have seen both.

Finally, an example of the kind of pictures you can get by using an automatic shooting mode and a suction cup camera mount on the kayak: