Sunday, July 22, 2007

The Myth of Free WiFi


Okay - Euro Tour 2007 was an utterly amazing 2 weeks. Portsmouth, Bath, Salisbury, Old Sarum, Windsor, Eton, London, Paris, Versailles - and the list gets longer. It was truly a family adventure and there are stories to tell, pictures to share, and impressions to paint.

I so hoped to be posting from Over There. I had my cool little Palm device with WiFi and had figured out how to post to Blogger via email. All I needed was an occasional wireless connection and I'd be reporting from the front lines. I had read so many breathless accounts of the European penchant for free hotspots, I suppose I pictured myself sitting in a cafe or in a park exuding a diamond-cool Wired magazine kinda vibe as I casually jacked into the Net from my PDA.

Cue the squeeze-box music. A loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, and the Information Highway running through my hands.

But I 'supposed' wrong. Nowhere did I encounter wireless access for the proletariat. Hotels, airports, cafes - they all wanted my credit card. Only once did I find a free connection, and that was some poor soul's unsecured home network that appeared for only for a few moments late one night at our room at a Salisbury B&B. I managed to squeak out one quick email to our house-sitter to let her know we'd arrived in England reasonably intact. Then, the connection evaporated - consumed by the Salisbury mist, I imagine.

I'm going to share some stories anyways. Maybe I'll even post it as a day-by-day account (set the Wayback Machine, Sherman) - at least until someone cries "Uncle!". But I can't help being a tad disappointed that my little experiment in 'You Are There' ended up a failure.

Stay tuned...

2 comments:

David Webb said...

Ah well, so much for the grand wireless experiment. I hate that kind of "lunch-bag letdown". Did you obsess? I would have, and might have ruined the trip in an effort to do something wireless.

Now, on with the tales!

Sonny Drysdale said...

Did you run into Vera Lynn over there in any of the airports?

Geez, the old girl must be what by now - 65, 70?

... on with the Disney stories!