Hi Happy Travelers,

We will be traveling through Italy for ~12 days and are looking for a reasonable way to stay in touch with family back home in the U.S. What is the easiest (and most affordable!) way to do that? We were offered the option by our wireless carrier (Verizon) to send us an international phone. They said that our current phones would not work there. The rates seem reasonable, but I am reluctant to trust them. I have trusted them before in the Caribbean and came home to a HUGE bill. Are we better off using this type of phone or just buying pre-paid phone cards? Do they even still have PAY PHONES over there?? (it's been a while since my last trip)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Every time I've been abroad I've been able to find very inexpensive calling cards back to the US (10 Euro for 1000 minutes if my memory serves me correctly), most with toll-free numbers that you can use from your hotel/apartment/B&B or from a Pay Phone. I was last in Europe (Spain to be exact) about 3 years ago and had no problem finding a pay phone.

Easiest....calling cards although you have to watch out a bit to make sure the triggering number is indeed toll free and a minority of hotels sometimes surcharge the triggering call....lots of minutes. However, lacks the ability for people to reach you.

With verizon, as noted, they will send you a world phone with a sim card inside for use in Italy...rates are not so cheap IMHO but if you're not going to use it too much, then you won't run up a real big bill. If somebody calls you (and they call you on your regular verizon number) you tell them you'll call them right back with the calling card.

Most convenient although not easiest to set up is your own cell phone from an Italian provider but somebody here is a chamion of easiest and quickest but not necessarily cheapest and most convenient so I'll let it go at that.

calling cards work great.
Last time I was in Italy I talked to my sister in USA everyday.

If it would be convenient to carry along a laptop, Skype is a great way to call home.

Otherwise, I've purchased an unlocked International/European phone (and also a UK phone) and usually get a SIM card in the country I'm travelling to. That way, you can keep the phone for future travels, rather than returning a rented phone.

I rented from Verizon the past two summers for traveling in Europe. Rates were expensive in 2007 and very inexpensive in 2008. In 2008, there were no fixed costs, low rates per minute, and inexpensive texting. For both years, my bill came in at exactly the rates as they had originally stated. I am renting from Verizon again for my trip to Europe this coming summer.

We have phones with sim cards for several different countries in Europe and they work fine. However, much cheaper and very convenient for us were the places called phone points or something like that. Anyway, we found several in Rome and other cities. They are little hole in the wall shops where they have two or three phone booths and you can call the states for about 9 or 10 cents a minute. I really liked that because we could call home for messages, and if I talked to my pet sitter or DD for even twenty or thirty minutes, it was only $2.00 or $3.00. We paid for it right there, no bills coming in later. I know there is one just off a little side street either by Campo de' Fiori or Piazza Navona, don't remember which, but we kept noticing them as we walked around. Just keep an eye out for them.
We told everybody at home to call our home and leave a message if they needed us and we just checked messages everyday.

There are also computer places all over that are pretty cheap, so if you are not carrying a laptop, you can pop in there, check your e-mail and e-mail everyone back home.