I'll need wifi this trip, where are your favorite wifi spots?

Honestly - my hotel. If not in the room, wifi is almost always available in the lobby. Once I'm out on the town, checking email etc... is the last thing I want to be doing.

My hotel, aparement, or B&B. Many offer a secure wifi connection.

McDonalds and Starbucks (or almost any other coffee cafe) are pretty reliable. As I've noted before, though, I prefer to get a prepaid SIM in Europe and buy a data package for my phone. Then I don't even have to worry about looking for a wifi signal. It is slower, yes, but for email and other uses it isn't that noticable. The convenience factor can't be beat.

Brad, We have used an iPod Touch exclusively on our last four trips. Wi Fi has been in every hotel we stayed in. Sometimes it is only in the lobby, and a very few places charged a bit for it, but we have been able to use it for email nearly every day on our trips. Many hotel Wi Fi connections are approached differently, but the hotel desk people have always been able to help. The Touch will go with us again for a forty-six day trip this Sept.-Oct. in Ukraine. There are two good things about using the Touch for email: 1) Its free. 2) It limits conversational interchanges that telephones encourage which are really not essential.

Brad, Wi-Fi as well as a computer in the Lobby are available at many Hotels and B&B's these days. The signal may be available only in the lobby or throughout the Hotel, sometimes included in the cost of the room and sometimes for a small charge. With places like McDonalds, I've found that one has to buy something in order to get the access code (as well as the key to the washroom). I used the same method as Douglas mentioned. I prefer to check E-mail, etc. either just after breakfast or at the end of the day. When I'm out touring, there's no way I want to be packing a computer along. Happy travels!

It sounds like our hotel is going to be our best bet then. I've never used WiFi as a feature when shopping for rooms. We won't need it daily, but hopefully can check email a couple times a week.

In our experience not very many hotels advertise their Wi Fi capabilities. You have to ask at the desk as you check in. Some will have a pile of little slips with the access code on them and they will give you one. Other hotels will print the access code on your receipt, and some will write it on whatever piece of paper you hand them. Our Touch is first generation and it doesn't seem sensitive enough to get the Wi Fi signal in our room in all hotels. It will hoverver, always work in the lobby as long as you hare having a glass of wine.

Whatever city you will be visiting, just google "free wi-fi" and you will get all the locations. Lots of smaller cafes will offer it as well as pubs.

Many parks in Paris offer free wifi. There's info somewhere on the web about this but I can't remember the site. It does work though. Although why you need to get online in a park on a nice day kinda escapes me (g). Don't know about other non hotel wifi in France though.

On our trip last in November, free WiFi was available( either in your room or in the lobby), in every hotel we stayed in( various locations in England, Wales, France ...about 10 hotels in total). No problems and super convenient. I used an iPhone in Airplane mode ( so essentially an iPod)....
As one poster mentioned however, when "out and about", McDonald's and Starbucks all seem to have WiFi access...

If you're headed to Rome, there are NO Starbucks (unlike London which has one every 100 meters it seems) and now the McDonald's require you to pre-register, which means you need a "local" cell phone number. So, some wi-fi options are changing. For a map and some listings of your wi-fi options in Rome, see this article.