I thought it would be good to update you guys on how the trip went in regards to what I was asking about here. I'll start with the phone.

The first day we got to Athens, we decided to walk around the Plaka to see the sites and take in the city. While doing so, we made sure to keep an eye out for any store that sold phones. We eventually found a shop on Syntagma Square (where their parliament building is). They were clearly very comfortable with selling SIM cards to tourists, and the person we worked with spoke excellent English.

She also spoke excellent "up-sell" There were dozens of options we could add to our prepaid plans, all tiered out very well. We could get 1, 2, 3 or more GB of bandwidth. We could get Greece-to-Greece and Greece-to-USA minutes in 100 minute blocks. We could get texts in various increments (can't remember, we didn't get any). We ended up with 1GB of data for my wife, 3GB for me since I wanted to stay in touch with my clients back home just in case. We also got some minutes for calling between phones (even though we didn't plan to split up much), and we got minutes for calls home.

I can say with absolute certainty that 1GB is way more than you need if you aren't using Netflix or Youtube. When I got there I disabled everything on my phone that automatically transferred data for me (Google+ and Dropbox photo uploads, Doggcatcher podcast downloads, etc). I then used the phone for ALL navigation, checked email all the time, browsed the web a ton, all the normal stuff. I was regularly looking up information about things we were seeing. None of this added up to more than about 500GB.

So why did I run out of data by the end of the trip?

Well, our first hotel claimed to have WiFi access, but it was terrible. The data speeds weren't enough to get pretty much anything done. So I foolishly decided to tether my laptop to my phone because I desperately needed to use my laptop for something. Now, I thought I'd disabled Dropbox and the Google Drive app on my laptop, but it looks like that wasn't the case. Soon enough my phone is giving me the bandwidth alert I'd set to 2.3GB, and I immediately stop the tethering. Naturally, this was about two days into our trip, and I'm freaking out because we still have another 12 days and I only have 700MB left.

Thankfully, I ran out on our very last day of sight seeing, and that only happened because I decided to download a podcast for our flight back to Athens from Santorini. My wife still had plenty of data left, so I figured we would be fine and I was right.

So yes, I think 1GB is plenty, but get more just in case

Now for power outlets:

In every situation, we basically saw outlets that look like this:


I believe this is the German style plug, right? Well, I had brought these along, when I guess I should have brought these.

The ones I brought still worked, but they barely reached the outlet enough, and would constantly fall out. It probably wasn't the safest thing to do, but it was what we had and it worked.

I brought those adapters and a few extension cords like the ones we discussed (I have about 20 of them lying around here), and it was a great system.

Thanks for the help with the phones and the power stuff, folks! I appreciate it!

Yes, and used in most of Continental Europe. Mandated in humid/wet places like bathroom and kitchen. In "dry" places, I think most countries still allow the 2-pole non-earthed version.

In Sweden it's been a while since I spotted a new item for sale with the non-grounded round plug. It's all either the round grounded or the flat non-grounded (IIRC requiring the item to be 'double insulated').
Not sure if that is by regulation or because of European standardization/simplification of production.

For outlets, it used to be that grounding was required for outlets within reach of water. Nowadays all [new] outlets must be grounded. GFI required for bathrooms and outdoors.

Anyone familiar with Frankfurt airport? Will I be able to purchase a cheap SIM for text & calls from a store there? I do see an O2 store listed, but don't know what they offer plan wise.
Heading in Frankfurt proper is not an option as I'll be stuck in the conference hotel as soon as I land, but I know SWMBO would appricate being able to contact me quickly just in case.

One of the podcasts I listen to had a sponsor that sells international SIMs before you travel. May be worth a look: http://www.simporium.com

Also worth noting, T-Mobile plans in the US now allow unlimited texting and 2G data when traveling to 100 countries at no additional charge. http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage.html#globalcoverage

+1 for this. I got an iPad mini retina with t-mo and used it in the UK and China. Worked just fine, obviously capped speed but very liberating to be able to roam for $0

And on the same subject, Three UK have "Feel At Home" which lets you use most of your usual tariff in a few countries - notably the US. This is available to prepaid/pay-as-you-go customers too, so convenient to just get a free SIM sent, top it up and then use it for cheap(er) data.

http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home