I was stuck in China on 9/11 and emails to and from friends and family helped keep me sane. Phone calls are very expensive so you don't use the phone much. Emails were free (except for internet use fee).<BR><BR>My daughter was in London for a month and she enjoyed hearing from home and I enjoyed hearing about what all she was doing.<BR><BR>I only read the personal stuff--delete or wait on all the rest.<BR><BR>

If I am checking my e-mails while on vacation, then I'm really not on vacation!

So, do you not make any phone calls either?

I check it if I am at a place that is modem friendly. We are travelling right now. I like to check the home newspaper, my credit card balance and bankstatements, and naturally what's going on with the Fodorites!<BR><BR>I bring down my email now and then so I can delete the massive amounts of spam so if I get something worthwhile there will be room for it in my mailbox.<BR><BR>Depending on the amount of time we are gone I like to BS with friends at home once in a while.

That's a definite no-no. No emails nor calls from my work. It's vacation and I am very protective of it.We keep in touch only with our grown children by telephone every few days. They know where they can reach us...

If I did that I'm not sure I could call it a vacation.

I'll go further with this. When we're on vacation...<BR><BR>No phone calls in or out. <BR><BR>No TV.<BR><BR>No e-mail.<BR><BR>No newspapers.<BR>

When we take month long roadtrips in the US and Canada (2000, 2002 and one coming up next month!)we check email maybe once every other week at a public library primarily to prevent the account from becoming full. Email is good because it lets people know where you are as oppossed to trying to call someone and they're not at home (no answering machine). Also, good because people can contact us while we're on the road since we do not have a cell phone. <BR>Since we do camping roadtrips out of our car, we usually only see tv once or twice in a month. Crazy b/c at home I'm a reality tv junkie but on the road I don't miss tv at all!

My work e-mail will not get touched. With a daily average of over 350 e-mails, these can pile up. Too bad.<BR><BR>However, my personal e-mails do get looked at. I use mail2web.com to check it, clean out the spam and send mail to those I care about. I usually get no more than 50 e-mails a day to that mailbox, and maybe 40 of them are junk, so it can be done in a few minutes. If I don't bring my laptop, I just use a pay Internet station.

I like reading my email while on vacation.

Heck no.

Nope.

I have a Hotmail account I use while traveling.<BR><BR>We check in with the family, the cat sitter, etc.<BR><BR>I agree with the delivery of bad news. My family will keep it until we return. We too are of the belief that there is nothing we can do until we get home. That stems from a trip many years ago when a beloved older cat died while we were away. My Mom was devastated and it put a cloud over the rest of the trip. Some might think that strange but pets are very important to some folks.

We occasionally check email on vacation, either on our laptop or an internet cafe if we leave the laptop at home. It is a good tool to keep in touch with our families and business. It was especially nice to communicate with loved ones while we were in France during 911 and they were concerned about us traveling. Didn't have to tie up phone lines.

I have a yahoo account I check on some trips for personal use only. I won't pay to check it though. I do call my Mom lots (about every other day), I like to share my adventures.<BR><BR>I too don't read the newspaper and usually don't watch the news. We were in England Sept 11 and had the rest of our trip ruined by knowing so now I just prefer to remain ignorant until I get home. Big stuff like that I am going to hear about anyway.

I don't necessarily &quot;check&quot; but I like the fact that I easily send a quick message to let people know things are going well and send my greetings. While traveling solo I don't make phone calls but send an email or two. It's fun to know I can keep in touch quickly even from long distances or other countries. AND it's so much cheaper. Hotels can charge quite a bit for even a few minutes. I don't check work or respond to work emails on vacation.

No way. In the olden days, B.E. (before email), we'd call my grown daughter and both sets of parents. Tres expensive, and sometimes a real pain, but we did it more for their sake their ours'. We are usually gone for 5-7 weeks and now rarely call. We were in Paris on 9/11, so we felt obligated to make contact.<BR><BR>An acquaintance's father died unexpectedly the day she and her husband left for Europe for three weeks. Her mother had no way of contacting her and she didn't call home during her trip. Her mother went ahead with the funeral and when she returned home everything had been taken care of. The reason that I referred to her as an acquaintance rather than a friend is that when she told us about his death, the first thing that she said ..'guess what, I got my father's Mercedes'. Takes all kinds. <BR>

P.S. That statement is only an example of why we don't think of her as a friend. I didn't want to sound _that_ petty! <BR>

I absolutely do not check email when on vacation! <BR><BR>Funny story, my husband brought his laptop on a three week trip through Europe with the idea he could check his email and deal with work crises, etc. On the flight over my son, in his sleep, kicked a glass of orange juice off the tray table right into the disk drive and the computer remained unusable for the entire trip! We had packed so carefully so we weren't carrying anything unnecessary, and here we were hauling this useless laptop all over Europe. For the first week or so my husband was jonesing for it, but by the time we got to Italy he was fine. I think the wine there helped too.

yes. i go for long periods of time, and I like to send group e-mails of my adventures