If you're traveling to a foreign country where they don't speak English, I highly recommend that you download the GF Card app (for iPhone, not sure if Android has it), which explains celiac disease, its severity, and what we can and can't eat in 20+ languages. It saved my butt in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.
There were some places that said, "Oh, everything is gluten free except the stuff with bread!", but when I showed them the card that explained that I would get seriously ill if I ate gluten, they got a lot more serious and spoke with the chef or manager.
The website has the cards in 54 languages. The cards are at the bottom of the site. You can print them out if you can't get the app. The only thing that it doesn't do is explain the risks of cross-contamination, so you might want to go to Google Translate and explain that yourself (you can screenshot it on your phone or print it out).
Here's a screenshot of what the card says in English:
I would definitely bring gluten free snacks (crackers, granola, etc) with you both ways and throughout your trip in case you can't get anything naturally gluten free. I put that I was carrying food on my customs form to get back into the US, and the guy asked me about it, and I just said that I had gluten free crackers because I have celiac disease and wanted to be able to eat on the plane. He nodded his head understandingly and was totally fine with it, then signed off on my form.
Yelp is what I depended on the most for finding gluten free restaurants. Just type in gluten free, then the city you're going to or a particular address (your hotel, for example), and it will give you a list of gluten free restaurants and their ratings. You can use filters to see what's open when you search or filter it based on cost, etc. I couldn't find some of the restaurants I looked up in Florence, so you might want to Google them or see if they have a phone number before making the trek out there. I've used this in cities in the US and abroad.
TripAdvisor has some too, but I think I googled "gluten free restaurants in [city]", then TripAdvirsor reviews would come up. It's good if you want to get more input on whether or not the food is good.
I would also recommend looking up what types of food in a certain country are naturally gluten free to make your life easier. For example, crepes made from buckwheat flour are gluten free, which was great to know in France.
Another thing that totally saved my butt when abroad was the Ulmon offline city maps. They don't use data or roaming charges, and they're really accurate! Super helpful in Florence where the city isn't really on a grid, and there are a million little side streets. They also have a lot of points of interest, restaurants, shops, etc on the map and you can pin certain addresses to save them. I would definitely recommend downloading these maps for any trip, domestic or international.
Anyway, gluten free traveling definitely takes some planning, but it's possible :)
(Also, in case you're wondering, the blog name means Princess (or Monarch/Ruler) of Celiac in German because I have a lot of German heritage).
