I don't think you can buy a phone and service over there - it's to prevent people doing various illegal things, I think. :-/

I tried to be clever in 2013 or so for a trip to Europe that J took with my Nexus 4. I got a TruPhone SIM that supposedly is automagically re-programmable when you cross country boundaries. It sounded like the perfect solution. I got it working here (kinda OK - the coverage was spotty) so I felt OK passing the phone off to her before she left.

It never worked right for her - she never got any service in Amsterdam (which supposedly was covered). (Dunno if it's better now.)

The last time I was over there (our Austria trip, I think) with the Nexus 4 I bought a SIM at a manned kiosk at the airport. I bought extra data to go with it too.

The data was eaten up by the end of the day without me intentionally doing anything with the phone.

:-/

So, I dunno. Maybe it's better in the UK. Everything I read before hand indicated it is a solvable problem to buy and use a SIM overseas.

If you want something that actually works, it probably makes sense to bite the bullet for the US-International coverage for the two weeks. Peace of mind is worth a lot, IMO.

Good luck.

Cheers,
Scott.