Wifi Scavengers

So one of the challenges has been figuring out what to do about our phone plans (without spending a fortune on data roaming).

We’ve been in Europe less than 24 hours and we’ve already turned into wifi scavengers… We actually hung out for an 30 extra minutes in Heathrow baggage claim just to use their free wifi.

I really wanted to be reachable on a consistent phone number (at least until we go to Africa in August) so I’ve kept my AT&T contract and added their cheapest int’l plan. This only gives me 120MB of roaming data per month (and is still
costing $80), so I’m trying to be extra-conservative and just use it for things like maps, etc. In other words, I’ll be on Facebook a whole lot less.

Stefan is going to buy SIM cards everywhere we go. You can get a lot more data for less money that way, but his number will change every time, and he will need to buy a new one in every country. (And they are only good for 30 days). So in cases like now, where we are in London for only 24 hours, he has no service at all.

All of this adds up to us becoming ridiculously excited about wifi at cafes, airports, hotels, etc (or especially angry if a hotel’s wifi isn’t decent). You’d think it was on the same level as clean drinking water – that’s how worked up we get. It’s certainly an adjustment coming from our unlimited international data plans that were paid for by work.

I promise not to make fun of the people standing outside of Apple Stores at all hours to use the free, speedy wifi ever again. 🙂