Will they let me 'stick a stick' in it? (USB, that is)

We were in a very small village in tuscany a couple of years ago during the Men's NCAA basketball tournament in March.

My dad was having trouble surviving without a copy of the brackets. There was a small public library there that had a computer, a broadband internet connection and a printer. A few minutes and a couple of euro later the problem was solved.

So you may be able to find access in even the smallest of places.

One of my needs is to print - specifically, our RyanAir boarding passes (which call for us to check-in 15 days (to 4 hrs.) before departure and then print boarding passes. Since the "reprint" fee by RA if you show up without your printed pass is 40 euro (per pass), we are looking for efficient ways to get this done.

Perhaps the more general question is about how to a RA boarding pass printed ... I'll post that in the Transportation section.

Meanwhile, for this question: Unless those of you carrying netbooks also tote a small printer, will the Net cafes (and hotels) let you plug into their printer? How are you able to print?

I haven't tried every Internet cafe in Europe, but the ones I have used, have allowed me to insert my USB stick, and I have downloaded data files as attachments to emails, printed them out, etc. It seems any modern computer will have a USB port in the front, and I have not found any to be disabled. I have not tried running programs from them. I expect that they might have some sort of a firewall to prevent that from happening. In fact, a particular one that I can remember had it's own "desktop", and you could run software that was loaded on that computer from the desktop, but I don't think there was any way you could run your own software from it.

On the other hand, several Internet cafes have had Wifi, and I was able to access the Internet from my netbook and basically do anything there that I could do from home.

I think Steve has the best solution. See if you can pull up the Ryanair site on the computer where you can print.

The only other solution would be to save the boarding pass page as a PDF file and then send it to your own email address as an attachment. Pull up your email account on the computer you are going to print from and then open the attachment.

Keri, we have never had a problem finding an internet cafe or internet point where we could print out boarding passes, etc. in Europe. As long as you can access it on the computer, they can print it for you. If one place does not have a printer they will usually tell you where to go to find one. They do charge a miminal fee for the printing, to cover their costs.

Thanks for all the quick responses. It looks like this is one challenge that may not give us "interesting" travel memories. (Whew! for that.)

BTW, the USB stick for this was not because it will have a PDF of the boarding pass; it has the 'printer driver' for the iPad/iPhone printing app. I just tested it (printing a HA boarding pass) and it doesn't appear to be actually "executing" on the host computer - but as Lee points out there could be some form of blocking/crippling that I may run into. So, it's good that there's another way to get printed passes (and no doubt more straight-forward, as well).

From the Ryanair article:

"It's a carrot and stick approach, but arriving without your boarding card has to be treated seriously in the same way as turning up without your passport is," he said. '

Should read, 'we can stick in to holiday travelers that don't want to spend their holidays looking for a printer while every other airline in the world has figured out a way to easily print boarding passes at the terminal.'

Not a Ryanair fan and I'm as cheap as they come. Sorry to hijack the thread for the rant

'and I'm as cheap as they come" - ah, you'd have a hard time beating me at the "cheap" game! -g- IMO, RA isn't all that bad, and it has introduced to places we've come to enjoy, like Beauvais. It's all a dance. And without this challenge to print their boarding passes I wouldn't have heard Ron's most excellent idea about the libraries. (Thanks, Ron!) That was a "smack my forehead" moment, for sure.

You could also ask the front desk staff at your hotel if they would print your boarding pass for you. At worst, they say no. At best, you're saved running around looking for a printer.

Never had a problem getting a printer at an Internet cafe, but don't have an iPod, so am not sure what that entails. I have had problems getting an open USB port, especially in Germany where many claimed they were afraid of getting a virus.