Hello,


We are going on a Western Med. cruise this week and want to use a calling card. Which one is the best? Any suggestions? We have a computer and plan to use that too.
I know to call on the boat is extremely expensive ,so we'll use our laptop on board. We don't want to buy a phone just for Europe either. natjgc

Using internet on the boat can also be very expensive so don't count on using that for phone calls.

For a calling card your best bet may be to buy a local calling card on the ground in Spain, France, & Italy. You can get these at any tabac or newsstand.

Some ferries have free WiFi. Check with your cruise company. Then sign up for Skype and make all the free phone/video calls you want.

Uh the times they have changed but generally you can buy a calling card on the ship which will tie into whatever the carrier is using at acceptable rates. Wifi on cruise ships is terribly expensive and a rip off and is slower than slow because of the satelite connection.

Thanks for the information. Getting a phone card on the boat or on land is a great idea.. Thanks so much. We have a laptop with Skype. The ship offers packages but they are costly..
natjgc

And don't expect the ship to have a super fast internet connection, either, to give you good Skype quality, even if you pay for the ship's WiFi package.

Getting a European cell phone could wind up being your best bet - or at least buying a SIM card for your unlocked GSM phone, if you have one. Many European prepaid SIMs have unlimited free incoming calls. Skype offers you a pay option whereby you can get a US phone number to receive calls on your computer (it's about $18/3 months to get a number). Then in addition you could pay Skype to forward incoming calls to a European cell phone number. So someone in the states could call your US Skype phone number, it forwards to your European cell, and all you pay is the per-minute forwarding fee to Skype.

(Beyond that, you could use Google Voice to make OUTGOING calls from that cell phone for the same price if you can access your Google Voice account from your laptop. But that's another discussion.)

I am surprised, but maybe I shouldn't be. Stena Line has free WiFi and National Express has free WiFi. Many 2* hotels and B&Bs have free WiFi. I guess that if you take a crui$e they expect you to pay pay pay. If you can afford the crui$e you can afford $50 a day for WiFi.