Mobile telephones

For starters, I'm going to suggest you go to the 'Search' box at the top right of this page and type in 'phones'. Just 'phones'. You'll be pretty sick of the topic by the time you finish reading all of that LOL! Also, click on 'Graffiti Wall' above; then look under the heading 'Money and Communication', and you'll find 'Cell Phone Tips'. My personal favorite is EuroBuzz. You'll see...;-)

Thanks so much.

Stacey, As Eileen mentioned, there are a huge number of posts here concerning travel with Cellphones, so those may answer your questions. As you don't want to travel with your regular phones, you basically have two options: a.) Buy a phone from one of the "travel phone" firms. b.) Buy a phone from a local carrier when you arrive in Europe. If you have further questions after reading the information here, post another note. Good luck and happy travels!

We used Skype, with our Ipod touch, primarily from our hotels for calls back to the US. For calling locally we bought a phone at our first stop, Barcelona, for 25 euros that came with ten euro credit for calls. We stayed in Spain so we never had a roaming issue (taking the phone into another country). If you visit other countries, you could use up your SIM card, then purchase a new one (rather than recharge the one you have) for your phone - that gives you the cheapest per minute cost for local calls. I like Rick's suggestion that you not leave the store where you purchase the phone/SIM card until the phone is working and you have made a test call. They aren't hard to set up but instruction manuals in non-English can be challenging. Let the store representative do it for you.