Cell phone for Europe?

I spent about 10 total minutes "on cellphones" in Italy... 2 to find the cell store at the train station, another 2 to explain what I wanted to the clerk who spoke English decently, a minute to pay, then the remaining 5 to swap the sim card in, boot the phone, and insure it worked.

Not really all that onerous, or time consuming, or requiring much energy.

Not to say you can't possibly run into a bad experience, but mine certainly wasn't one.


Now, if the ONLY thing you were gonna use it for was a once-a-day call back to the US, sure, skip the cell, just get a cheap calling card from one of the news/tobacco places and use a public or hotel phone with it.


But the 10 minutes invested in the cell was very useful for us for other reasons... in rough order of value:

1) Data, for local map/directions/hours of businesses stuff- also nice to have data in places that didn't have wifi available like during a train ride between cities

2) A handful of local calls to make a reservation or confirm or inquire about details not found on their website, etc

3) Calling EACH OTHER if doing anything where we were apart, as we had both a smartphone for the #1 item and a cheap "dumb" phone to stay in touch (and thus bought one data/voice sim, and one just voice)

4) Being reachable from the US just in case some emergency came up


that's apart from the tremendous value having my smart phone on the trip added regardless of having service or not... (ebooks, games, music, etc)