For lunch you had a primo of Rigatoni con funghi porcini and a secondo of grilled fresh water eel. Not being the one to ignore the health benefits of red wine, you emptied a bottle of young Bardollino. Then you crossed the canal and stopped for a nocciola (hazelnut) gelato topped with whipped cream.

Now you are in Piazza San Marco, sipping a brandy Alexander. You glance at your watch. It is 2 p.m. There is plenty of time to check the previous night scores and set your line-ups for tonight. It is only 8 a.m., East coast time, 5 a.m. Pacific.

There is nothing to worry about. You know that your hotel has Internet. Most if not all European hotels offer Internet access today. Some hotels, the more expensive ones I must add, offer it for free. Other hotels either charge for computer rental or offer free computers that have a single Internet provider billing your credit card for hourly connection. In either case, cost is minimal, between 1 to 2 euros per hour. Your fantasy teams are well worth the expense.

If your hotel does not have Internet access or you are somewhere in town and want to check on your teams, look for shops, generally the size of one to two windows which offer “internet point”. Term “internet café” is not widely used everywhere. In the yellow pages, look for “call centers”. These are small shops offering inter-country phone calls at reasonable rates. Europeans guard their telecom jealously, hence making long distance calls to other countries is expensive.

So, bring your passport, should you use a call center. They must record your ID before letting you use their terminals, a charming European formality. Cost is generally between 1 to 2 euros, although I found one asking 6 euros for one hour of connect time. Print-outs are generally ¼ to half a euro per page. To beat the crowd, try to arrive before 3 p.m. when kids leave school. Network speed is not a problem. All places that I used offer a DSL-like connection.

I have teams on NFBC, Sportsbuff, Yahoo and CBS Sportsline. Other than a location that had a java incompatibility with CBS Sportsline Live Scoring page, I did not encounter any problems opening any web sites that we, fantasy players, regularly access.

My intent is not to encourage anyone to spend on-line their otherwise fabulous European vacation. Teams with a weekly lineup change may not suffer from your sporadic online access. The ones that allow daily changes may take a hit. Set your priority right and enjoy your vacation.