We are going to be in Italy this coming Sept. 2010. The place we are staying in Cinque Terre must be reached by phone to arrange a meeting time for when we arrive in the area so that they can show us the way to our accomodations.

We have never traveled to Europe with a phone and have found that trying to make a call on a payphone with a calling card is impossible.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on what is the most convenient, user friendly, and cost efficient way to travel to Europe (Italy) with a phone??

Please Help! =) Thanks!

Also...is anyone familiar with "Pension Hasslhof" in the Bolzano area? We are thinking about staying there for a few nights between traveling from CT to Munich.

Thanks again!

If you do not already have one, purchase an "unlocked" (simply meaning not tied to a company) GSM quad band phone (try ebay). Then either in advance, or once in Italy, purchase a sim card and minutes. It is easy.
I bought the sim card and minutes off Amazon, but only because I was not arriving somewhere with many phone stores.

Thank you yorkshire! I will check ebay.

You can also "rent" an international phone for the period of time you're in Europe. About $100 a month or so.

Where do you rent an international phone? Here in the US before leaving on the trip or in Italy when we get there? I would like to have the phone already with us and ready to use when we leave.

another question...do the unlocked GSM Quad Band phones work anywhere depending on the SIM card purchased or is the phone itself country specific?
Any details on the subject are greatly appreciated!

We finally broke down and bought 2 ebay cell phones to use to keep in touch with each other in Italy. They were very inexpensive, and we also bought a 10 minute sim card on ebay for each phone. They worked fine for making calls we needed to make to other places, but they did not work for contacting each other. In the street noise, we could not hear the phones ring. Vibrate didn't work for me, because I carry them in a shoulder bag.

The quad band part covers making the phones work in different countries, so only the SIM card part is specific. (In South America or Asia, you might need a different phone, but quad band covers Europe fine. There are lots of primers you can read online that explain it fully.)