Visitor Information

Tourist Offices

For general information in your home country, try your local branch of the Italian Government Tourist Board (ENIT) or www.italiantourism.com. Some Frommer's readers have reported that the office isn't really that helpful.

In the United States: 630 Fifth Ave., Suite 1565, New York, NY 10111 (tel. 212/245-4822 or 212/245-5618; fax 212/586-9249); 500 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 2240, Chicago, IL 60611 (tel. 312/644-0996 or 312/644-0990; fax 312/644-3019); and 12400 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 550, Los Angeles, CA 90025 (tel. 310/820-1898 or 310/820-9807; fax 310/820-6357).

In Canada: 175 Bloor St. E., Suite 907, South Tower, Toronto, Ontario M4W 3R8 (tel. 416/925-4882; fax 416/925-4799; enit.canada@on.aibn.com). In the United Kingdom: 1 Princes St., London W1B 2AY England (tel. 020/7399-3562; italy@italiantouristboard.co.uk).

For more specific details on Tuscany, contact the regional tourist office in Florence: APT, Via Manzoni 16, 50121 Firenze (tel. 055-23-320; fax 055-234-6286; www.firenzeturismo.it). For Umbria, contact the Ufficio Promozione Turistica, Corso Vannucci 30, 06100 Perugia (tel. 075-50-41; fax 075-504-2483). To get even more details, put yourself in contact with the regional and city tourism offices, listed in each section (or you can get a list from the ENIT).

Local tourist offices are the best places to pick up a free map of that city, and they are usually very good. For a map of Tuscany and/or Umbria, your best bet is to check out the wide selection at any downtown edicola, or news kiosk. This will be especially important if you are driving around the countryside, as maps from rental-car agencies are far from adequate. For basic navigation around Italy, I rely on country maps from Michelin, which are sometimes available at news kiosks, and almost always sold at Autogrill highway rest stops. They are not very useful, though, for backcountry roads.

Useful Websites

Websites and e-mail addresses are included throughout this guide for everything from tourist offices, hotels, and restaurants to museums and festivals.

The official site for Tuscany is www.turismo.toscana.it, with links to every provincial tourist office site. The official Florence information site, www.firenzeturismo.it, contains a wealth of up-to-date information (events, museums, practical details) on Florence and its province. Included is a searchable "hotels" form that allows you to specify amenities, categories, and the like; it responds by spitting out a list of comparable hotels, and it lists contact info and current room rates. The official site for Umbria is www.umbria-turismo.it.

Firenze by Net (www.mega.it/florence), Firenze.Net (http://english.firenze.net), and FlorenceOnLine (www.fol.it) are all Italy-based websites with English translations and good general information on Florence. Also check out The Heart of Tuscany (http://nautilus-mp.com/tuscany), and Chianti Doc Marketplace. And of course there's Frommer's (www.frommers.com), where you'll find excerpts from this guide, occasional updated information, and links to travel packages.

Telephones

To call Tuscany/Umbria:

1. Dial the international access code: 011 from the U.S.; 00 from the U.K., Ireland, or New Zealand; or 0011 from Australia

2. Dial the country code 39.

3. Dial the city code (for Florence: 055) and then the number. (Do not drop the initial 0 as you might in other European countries.) Even when calling within Italy, you always need to dial the city code first.

To make international calls: To make international calls from Italy, first dial 00 and then the country code (U.S. or Canada 1, U.K. 44, Ireland 353, Australia 61, New Zealand 64). Next you dial the area code and number. For example, if you wanted to call the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., you would dial 00-1-202-588-7800.

For directory assistance: Each cellphone carrier has its own directory assistance number, which is listed automatically in the address book of your SIM card. For Telecom Italia, and its mobile carrier, TIM, the directory assistance number is tel. 412.

For operator assistance: For operator assistance in making either a domestic or international call from a Telecom Italia land line, call tel. 170.

Toll-free numbers: Numbers in Italy beginning with 800 or 877, and a few others beginning with 8, are toll-free, but calling a 1-800 number in the States from Italy is not toll-free. In fact, it costs the same as an overseas call.

Internet/E-Mail

Without your own Computer -- To find cybercafes in your destination check www.cybercaptive.com and www.cybercafe.com. Lots of wine bars and Irish pubs in Florence have wireless Internet access, as do most hotels throughout Tuscany and Umbria. When my Internet wasn't working in Florence, I usually relied on the Old Stove pub on Via Pellicceria 2r (tel. 055-284-640), near the Ponte Vecchio, which was also a good excuse for a midday Guinness.

Most major airports have Internet kiosks that provide basic Web access for a per-minute fee that's usually higher than cybercafe prices. Check out copy shops such as Kinko's (FedEx Kinko's), which offers computer stations with fully loaded software (as well as Wi-Fi).

With your own Computer -- More and more hotels, resorts, airports, cafes, and retailers are going Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity), becoming "hotspots" that offer free high-speed Wi-Fi access or charge a small fee for usage. Most laptops sold today have built-in wireless capability. To find public Wi-Fi hotspots at your destination, go to www.jiwire.com; its Hotspot Finder holds the world's largest directory of public wireless hotspots.

For dial-up access, most business-class hotels throughout the world offer dataports for laptop modems, and a few thousand hotels in Europe now offer free high-speed Internet access.

Wherever you go, bring a connection kit of the right power and phone adapters, a spare phone cord, and a spare Ethernet network cable -- or find out whether your hotel supplies them to guests. Keep in mind the outlets are 220V in Italy, and you will need an adapter for a U.K. or North American plug -- the same one used for France and most of the rest of the Continent.