We will be travelling to Dublin for several days then on to Amalfi. What is the best cell phone option for us? We plan to use Skype for most needs, but we would like to have an "emergency" phone in the event our family needs to reach us

For $45 I bought a Mobal cell phone that only works while I'm in Europe. It's pay as you go on calls and outgoing texts (they charge the credit card you bought the phone with) and incoming texts are free. It worked fine for me in Germany where I was laid over and in Russia.

www.mobal.com I think you could also rent from them too, but I bought the phone to have for future trips.

You can buy an "unlocked" quad band GSM cell phone on E-bay or elsewhere (Circuit City, Amazon) for under $100 dollars (under $50) on e-bay. Make sure it is a GSM phone, quad band 850/900/1800/1900.

Once in Ireland you can sign up with Voda Phone or O2 (or probably another phone company) for +/- 20 Euros. A 10 Euro "fill up" on time will give you tons of time on calls to the US. If you travel to Europe more than just once in your life it's probably a good investment. It's a lot cheaper than using your AT&T phone on roaming when in Europe.

If you have AT&T or T-Mobile or some other GSM system phone, you might be able to get your phone unlocked here (or it could already be unlocked) and then use that in Ireland with a sim card you buy from one of their phone companies. That’s what we have done for our last few trips. It’s very cheap that way.

(Don't expect texting unless you want to pay extra).

Thank you for your helpful suggestions!

Make sure you get a phone which runs under UMTS so you can use the 3 network. Also check that you can download Skype mobile on to it. Thereby you can use your phone for making and recieving Skype calls as well as having a mobile number for someone to reach you in an emergency.