2 Week Vacation in UK

[Motel75]

Originally Posted by LOTL

We will have very little time to get a phone when we arrive. Being that Bristol appears to be a decent sized city, i would imagine i should be able to email one of the carriers and arrange to pick up a phone on a specific date and possibly even get a number from them before we arrive.

Crikey. You can pick up a brand new phone within a few minutes for very little money, possibly at the airport, or otherwise just about anywhere else. Britain is about the most competitive telecoms market anywhere, and there are phone shops on nearly every corner (note that #1 Carphone Warehouse does not actually sell car phones anymore, but the old name has stuck). You can't e-mail ahead and request a number (and there'd be no reason to - once you've got the phone, just call home and tell them what your number is).

If you get a Vodafone SIM, you can call the US for 5p a minute, and there are other cheap deals available - see PrePaidGSM: United Kingdom. (And if you do decide to get a nice phone rather than a 5 pound throwaway, do get one that's quad band, so you can use it in the USA.) You can even keep your UK SIM active so you can use it on future visits, even years later, by occasionally doing something with it like sending a text message every six months.