In advance of our trip to Europe I ordered three prepaid SIM cards from Orange—the Orange Holiday Europe 20GB package. This included 20GB of data, 1,000 international SMS, and two hours of international voice, and cost €40.

I’ve no doubt we could have done better with a prepaid SIM bought locally once we landed, but knowing we’d be connected as soon as we landed was a comfort, as was having our French telephone numbers in-hand before leaving.

Here at the departure gate, after 14 days travel, where I didn’t give a second thought to my data budget and promiscuously streamed videos and music, I end the trip with 12GB leftover, meaning I used just over ½GB a day on average.

I am left with 996 SMS to my credit, and 90 minutes of talk time. For what it’s worth, the three of us went through one tube of shared toothpaste in the same two weeks and did laundry three times (once in a laundromat and twice in apartments).