I still remember when my husband got slapped with an exorbitant €70 extra fee on his €10 basic mobile plan because he mistakenly went online for a few minutes during a layover in Turkey. Since then, avoiding roaming fees has been our personal crusade, especially since we like travelling and our basic local data plans have ridiculously expensive fees when we step outside of Europe.
Over the years, I’ve put together a three-prong strategy to avoid paying for roaming fees, and while these work very well for me when traveling out of France, they should also apply to you, no matter where you come from. If you’re in the US, my colleague Andrew Grush has specifically added a section at the end to help you make better decisions about using roaming plans versus eSIMs.