My family will be in Italy for a couple of weeks. We will not be calling back to the US. Are phones available at the airport that you can purchase for calling within Italy? If not there, where would they be available? Thanks

Unlock your phones and buy a SIM at the airport.

Now, which airport are you landing at?

You have already asked this question and have gotten some responses:
http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...s-in-italy.cfm

Yes, I have asked but guess I just didn't understand. I do have a phone here through Verizon, but I thought that it was very expensive to use a US phone over in Italy. Since we do not want to use one to call back to the US, only to call each other in Italy, my assumption was that we could all purchase a cheap phone with temporary service to use while we were there.

We bought a cheap unlocked phone on eBay, then bought a SIM card in Italy. We do the same thing in every European country (only buy a SIM card for that particular country, the phone is ours), and never had any problems.

I should have done my homework before asking. I called Verizon global, and it seems that my phone will work fine, and it will not cost much per call if I turn off certain stuff. Thanks for your input.

To call each other, you would need two phones and two SIM cards. In this situation, getting a global plan with your current provider is almost always cheaper.

What is not discussed here, is the usage model. Just how much call is involved here? There is no one solution. You need to match solutions to your needs.

For calls up to perhaps 10 minutes total, just using your phone would be the least hassle, no need to look for places to buy, etc., and also the cheapest overall. If your expected usage is like "Hi, I am late leaving my hotel. I will be at the restaurant in 10 min ok?" a few times overall, then just use your current phone as is.

For calls up to perhaps around 30 minutes, a global plan of some sort would be cost effective and still you don't have to spend time looking for a local solution in Italy.

If, however, you are a chatter bug filling all your days on your phone talking like, "You never believe what I saw this morning. I was at a cafe drinking my morning coffee, .... blah blah blah...." then you need a heavy duty local solution of some kind.