any advice on various options to phone home, from Europe? (mostly UK, France & Italy). Cell phone deals are too expensive (huge cost if phone is lost or damaged) Thinking about ekno card from RailEurope or AT&T calling card.

When you get to your destination, by a prepaid phone card on a tobacco store. I bought one in Italy in September for $5.00, and I think that card was at least an hour's worth of time to call back to the states.

Would not suggest an ATT calling card. Rates even here in the states run $.89 per minute and $4.99 to use the card. Per purchase ATT pre-paid cards at Sams for 3.4 cents per unit. 1,000 unit card=$34.00. calls from France are charged at 7/units per minute. Would like to know the brand of any cards available in France. BTW, make sure the cards have no expiration date. Some are only good for a set period from the first use.<BR><BR>Bob

Surprisingly the cheapest calls I made home from the states were from my hotel phone dialing direct. If you are staying at a smaller hotel (certainly NOT an American chain like Hilton or Marriott), they are likely to pass on their already low international rates. You might ask what their rates are, and it is possible you will be surprised. My favorite thing was that I sent a few faxes back to the states and was never charged more than $1.00 -- one hotel didn't even charge me, saying they weren't sure how much it should be, but they send so many faxes to the US not to worry about it. That is also the hotel that charged me something like a euro for about a 20 minute call home, dialed direct from my room.

Wasn't that a great job of proofreading? I meant calls home TO the states, not FROM the states.

OK Patrick, What Hotel???<BR><BR>That is not usually the case.

Actually that fax episode and cheap phone call was from Lipari -- Hotel Poseidon. I think some of the other cheap calls were from the Hotel du Golfe in Ajaccio, Corsica and the Hotel Ampezzo in Cortina, Italy. All those were last summer. I have found the same thing to be true though from a number of smaller hotels -- usually privately owned three star places.

Don't ever use the &quot;easy&quot; numbers posted in the phone booths. Only thing easy is that it charges directly to your credit card. We'd struggled using the card purchased at the tabbac and gave in because we really needed to get in touch with &quot;back home.&quot; A 12 minute call ended up costing $42. (It was sort of an emergency, but STILL!) The next day the hotel desk clerk helped us figure out what we were doing wrong with our pre-paid card, and we probably never used up the approx $10 on that card but did make three more (longer) calls back to the states.

I was just in London and Paris. We bought a 15 Euro card in Paris that I talked a good bit on (my parents still want me to call home and I'm 27). <BR>We just picked it up in a small market. Most everywhere has them.<BR>Same with London - got a 5 GBP card there and had over 2 hours talk time.<BR>It was all pretty easy.

I just pulled them out of my purse, the names are:<BR><BR>Paris:<BR>Carte Idilys Qualivioce<BR>International<BR>15 Euro<BR>Has a night time picture of the Eiffel tower on it.<BR><BR>London:<BR>Amer1stca<BR>a tan/gold card with green and red writing. <BR>It reads &quot;wherever you want to call it's cheaper to call America first&quot;<BR>5 GBP